


I Will Find You

by EMMegs



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, CCG!Hide, Dorks in Love, Double-Agent!Hide, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff, Haise Never Remembers, In which Hide leads a damn revolution, M/M, Revolution with a romantic twist?, Suffering, all the feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-19 07:53:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7352449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EMMegs/pseuds/EMMegs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where Haise never remembers Kaneki, and Hide emerges from the shadows of the CCG information division, Haise and Hide are undeniably drawn together – Hide because he knows who Haise is, and Haise for some undefinable reason that he can’t put a finger on. </p><p>-</p><p>“Listen to me, Haise. Don’t look for me. You’ll know what I did when it happens, when it shows up on the news. You’ll know. It’s done and it can’t be undone. Don’t look for me, just do your job and let it all blow over okay? Train the kids. Take care of them, double for me. And no matter what dreams come up, no matter what you start to remember or don’t of your past, stay strong. When—if it’s safe again, I’ll find you. I promise; I’ll find you.” </p><p>“But, Hide—“ </p><p>“Haise, do you trust me?” </p><p>Haise looks into his eyes, swallows, and says, “With my life.” </p><p>“Then trust me now. I will find you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Those Things You Sacrificed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY SO. I rearranged the events of TG:re a bit to make sure that Haise doesn't really remember EVERYTHING and so that people stay alive. But just keep in mind that everything AFTER the Auction Raid is gonna be different. All the same things will happen but they're gonna be on a different timeline. Kay? Kay. 
> 
> Also working off the assumption that Hinami does not get captured during the auction raid because it just makes my job easier.

Haise first caught sight of him after the Auction Raid, a lanky blond with a hand scratching the back of his head. He was dressed in the same black battle suit with light armor, surrounded by a group of CCG agents from the information division. Some (probably superiors) were scolding him, others (probably newer recruits) were congratulating him. Haise found himself puzzling over him for some reason. He felt like he knew him, but he was sure he hadn’t ever come in contact with him.

“Maman!” Saiko calls, drawing his attention away. The doctor looking Haise over nods just barely in consent for him to leave and moves on to the next person. Haise stands, still woozy, and stumbles almost unperceptively toward his subordinate, forcing a smile on his face.

“Are you okay?!” Mutsuki asks, in stride with Saiko. Shirazu is trailing behind them. Out of the corner of his eye, he notes the blond turn towards him. He glances at Haise, looks vaguely startled for a single moment, and turns back to his coworkers. Haise frowns.

“Yeah I’m fine,” he mutters, trying to place where he’s seen that face before.

Mutsuki is looking at dried blood plastered to his face and matted into his hair, frown on his lips. Saiko wraps her arms around his waist and clings without relenting for the next 10 minutes straight. Shirazu claps a hand on his back and mutters unintelligibly. Haise smiles for them, ensuring them that he’s fine, and yes, they did all survive.

But his eyes still stray toward the blond, who is now walking away from him with his cohort.

And maybe he imagines it, but he thinks, just for a split second, that he sees a bared, bitten shoulder.

 

 

The second time he sees him, the blond is walking briskly beside Akira, muttering conspiratorially. Haise can’t catch even a snatch of their conversation, even with his ghoul hearing, but Akira catches sight of him and hisses at the blond to silence him. 

The blond looks at him and seems almost to suck in a breath. Haise feels some unexplainable urge to speak to him, to lay bare his soul to this stranger who he has only encountered one other time.

“Hello, Haise,” Akira greets and promptly smacks a stack of files in his hand. “This is Nagachika Hideyoshi from Division II. You’ll be working closely together on your next few cases, it seems.” She then shoots Nagachika such a venomous look, Haise half-wonders what they could have been talking about that would put him on Akira’s bad side so quickly. She smiles at him as he nods and begins to walk again.

Nagachika bows to him hurriedly. “Nice to meet you formally, First Class Sasaki. Please, call me Hide.”

“You as well, Hide-san,” Haise says, almost in a daze. Hide looks behind him, presumably after Akira.

“E-Excuse me,” Hide mutters, bowing again and racing around him after Akira. “Oi! Akira-san!” he yells and Haise raises an eyebrow, looking after him.

 _Hide, Hide, Hide_. Where does he know that name?

 

 

Hide gradually becomes integrated into their team over the next few weeks. He’s mostly there as a well of information, but his sunny personality brightens up their office days. Except for Haise. Haise spends all the days Hide’s around trying to figure out where he’s seen his face, heard his name, his voice, his _being._  

It’s driving him mad. Slowly but surely. He can’t figure it out and it is _maddening_. Haise almost relishes their days off because it means that there is less chance of running into him, of feeling that annoying tickle in the back of his mind.

He’s sitting at his desk, listening to Hide talk with the kids about some case notes, when he cracks. He stands abruptly and stalks out of the room, nearly slamming the door to their office in the process and startling Shirazu (who _literally_ falls out of his tilted chair). He finds Akira’s desk and, hands braced against it and a slightly crazed look in his eye, asks, “Where the _hell_ did he come from and why is he working with _us_?”

Akira raises a bemused eyebrow and simply retorts, “Is he doing something in particular that bothers you?”

Haise cannot even begin to explain what bothers him. “He’s just… _there_. That’s the problem.”

“I’m not following you, Haise.”

“Akira. I cannot work under these conditions. He has to go or I will.”

“He’s good for your team, Haise. In fact, Arima and I were just chatting about moving him into the Chateau with you.”

Haise can just feel himself pale. It’s bad enough feeling this nagging sensation every damn minute they’re at work together… At _home_ too?? “I… I can’t.” Haise collapses in the nearest chair.

“What exactly is the issue?”

“I just… I know him. But I don’t. And it’s driving me mad.”

Akira leans forward a little, a knowing little smirk on her lips. And, goddamn her, she knows something, Haise _knows_ she knows something. “Haise. Why don’t you try not thinking so hard about it and just _talk_ to him like a normal person? So what if you think you knew him? You don’t know how he’s changed since the time that you knew him before – _if_ you did."

Haise scowls a little but concedes to her point. He returns to the QS office and tries to make himself believe that she’s right. Hide is not going anywhere and Haise is just going to have to deal with it.

When the door opens a sudden hush falls over the room and Haise plasters a bright smile on his face. “Everything alright, Sassan?” Shirazu asks as he sits down.

“Yes,” he says, hand straying to his chin. “I just forgot I had some business to discuss with Akira is all.”

Hide is staring at him, the tiniest of frowns on his face. Haise pretends not to notice the spike that seems to lodge itself in his temple, tries to ignore the feeling of recognition, déjà vu he gets from that look. When the kids leave for lunch, Haise promises that he’ll catch up to them and allows himself to sit blissfully alone for a while.

Of course, who returns as he’s pinching the bridge of his nose to fight off a headache than Hide. “Oh hey, Sasaki-san. Uhh. You okay?”

Haise hears that question echo somewhere in his distant memory. His headache increases. “I’m fine,” he says curtly then sighs at himself for his curtness.

“So… Are you gonna come to lunch or what?”

Haise purses his lips and, though he knows this will inevitably lead down the rabbit hole of his circumstances, says, “I… can’t eat.”

“Oh.” Hide seems to pick up on the implications almost immediately. “Coffee?”

Haise lets out a laugh. “Yeah. Coffee’s fine.”

“Well. I know I’m not exactly the person you want to hang around your team—“

“Hide-san I never meant to make you feel unwelcome—“

“—No you’re totally within your rights there. I kinda popped up with no warning—but uhh, I’m really looking forward to working with you. I’ve… heard good things. Really.” He bites his lip and bounces from foot to foot. And Haise frowns a little as the image comes to mind of someone running toward him with those same feet.

“Do you want to get coffee tomorrow or something?” Haise blurts, totally spur-of-the-moment, unplanned, unexpected even for him. He blanches at himself then backtracks. “I mean we’re going to be working together so it’d be nice to at least get to know—“

“I’d love to, Sasaki-san,” Hide interrupts gently. “Tomorrow after work?”

“Sure! I know a place not far from here actually.”

Hide’s stomach makes an interjection and Haise can’t stop the laugh that bubbles out of him. “I should probably go eat,” he says and Haise nods. “You coming? I mean… Even if you can’t eat you can at least get some coffee and keep us company.”

Haise looks around for an excuse, realizes he has none, and sighs before standing and walking with him.

He doesn’t notice any kind of headache for the rest of the day.

 

 

They meet at the office right after their shift ends. Haise tosses the car keys to Mutsuki, who looks up in surprise. “Meet you at home, kay? Hide-san and I are gonna have a little talk."

Saiko’s eyes narrow immediately. Mutsuki looks surprised. Urie is as indifferent as always but is scowling at the fact that the keys were given to Mutsuki instead of him. Shirazu is totally flabbergasted, looking between the two of them like they’re aliens.

Haise laughs a little awkwardly at their reactions. “I’ll be home in time to cook dinner.”

Hide waves a little as Haise says goodbye and prods him out the door.

They’re both really quiet the whole walk to :re because neither of them really knows what to say now that they’ve decided to get to know each other. (Something about the silence bothers Haise for reasons he can’t explain. He’s fairly sure that there has never been an awkward silence like this between them in his life—but this is the first time he’s known Hide so that’s impossible.) It’s when they finally get there and Hide gasps, “Oh! I know this place!” that there’s something to talk about.

“Really?”

“Yeah, this girl I knew back in college runs the pl—Oh shit. She’s gonna _kill_ me.” He stops abruptly, staring at the storefront and looking vaguely apprehensive. “She might _actually_ kill me.”

“Why?” Haise raises an eyebrow.

“She hasn’t seen me in ages.”

Haise snorts. “And that’s grounds for murder? I honestly don’t see Kirishima-san as the murderous type.”

Hide gives a nervous laugh and scratches the back of his head as Haise snags his arm and pulls him toward the door with a roll of his eyes. “If I get killed for this, it’s your fault,” he hisses just before Touka catches sight of them. She scowls.

“Nagachika?” Then she tilts her head toward Haise. “Afternoon Sasaki-san.”

“Hey, Touka-chan!” Hide says at the same time Haise says, “Hello Kirishima-san.”

“Where did you crawl out of finally?” Touka asks Hide with a faintly grumpy expression. Hide’s grin becomes more strained and he glances at Haise. She frowns a little but then shakes her head. “Nevermind. I don’t need to know. I don’t want to know. Table for two I take it?”

“Yes please!”

She leads them to a table by the window and goes to prepare Haise’s coffee.

They’re alone again. And Haise, being the awkward nugget that he is, has no idea what to say now.

“She’s grown a lot since I knew her,” Hide mutters, his gaze directed at the counter where Touka is pouring water over the coffee grounds. “If she was still in high school she probably might have actually killed me for showing up here after disappearing on her.”

“You disappeared?”

“For a while. I… Uh… had a family emergency. Goodness it must have been two years or so since I last saw her.”

“How did you know :re was here then?”

Hide shrugged. “Division II. We tend to do cursory screens of new businesses. Besides, I’ve passed this place enough times to know where it is and to know that she was here.”

Haise frowns. “And you didn’t come talk to her before because…?”

“I’m a busy guy, Sasaki-san! Division II works their employees half to death, I’m telling you. We do all the behind the scenes work and get none of the credit. Besides… I kinda figured she was better off without me in her life.” Hide laughs and Touka returns with a cup of black coffee and a cappuccino. “Thanks, Touka-chan! You still know what I like!” She rolls her eyes and strides away.

Haise watches him as he burns his tongue on his cappuccino, trying to wrap his head around this familiar, yet dissonant feeling wrapping around him.

“But anyway, Touka-chan used to work at a coffee shop I frequented with my best friend when we were in college. He started working there too, actually.” Haise doesn’t miss how intently Hide watches him as he says these words, nor the pained sort of look that only briefly flashes across his face. He picks up his coffee, half-listening as Hide talks about his past.

_“Good luck, delusion-boy!”_

Haise nearly drops his coffee and Hide abruptly stops talking to look at him in concern. He looks at Hide, but the boy couldn’t have said it, even if it did seem to be his voice. He’s sloshed some coffee on his shirt but he hardly even notices the heat.

“Hey.” Hide’s got a napkin and is dabbing at his shirt. “You alright?”

Haise stares at him but for some reason he can’t really see him.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to talk your ear off.”

_“Give it up.”_

He feels suddenly like he’s going to puke, which is odd because he never feels like that.

“Sasaki-san?”

Haise breathes in deep and lays a hand on the table. “I’m fine,” he says, waving away Hide’s concern. “Just...” Hide seems to hold his breath for a second and Haise continues more firmly, “It’s nothing.”

The nausea is gone. He takes another sip of his coffee. Hide slides slowly back into his seat, watching him like a hawk. “How’d you come to the CCG?” Hide asks and Haise nearly chokes. “Ah. Sorry. Too blunt.”

“I would think that you’d already know that, Mr. Division II,” Haise mutters after clearing his throat.

“Well. Yeah. I get your _situation_ but…”

“I’m not sure,” he says quietly, unsure exactly why he’s saying anything. “The first thing I remember is talking with Arima-san in Cochlea. That was two years ago.”

“So you don’t remember… _anything_ from the first twenty years of your life?”

Haise shakes his head and, to cover up his self-consciousness, takes a sip of coffee. “Ah.” A sad look flashes across Hide’s face which Haise notices but doesn’t comment on. There’s silence between them for a moment.

“How did _you_ come to the CCG?” Haise asks when it becomes unbearable.

“Oh. When I was in college I started working there as a messenger boy around the same time my best friend started working with Touka-chan.” Hide swallows and Haise realizes that the uncomfortable air around him stems from talking about this ‘best friend’ of his. “I caught Marude’s eye and he pulled me into Division II. Apparently I had a knack for strategy and gathering intel.” He wrinkles his nose a little and sips his cappuccino. “Not nearly as impressive as catching the eye of Kishou Arima.” Haise is fairly sure that tone is teasing.

There’s some silence again and Haise quietly, hesitantly says, “What happened to your best friend?”

Hide sucks in a breath and seems to hold it for a while. When he lets it out, his eyes are closed. “I don’t know,” Hide answers. “He went missing and then… I’m not sure. I think he might be dead. I heard from him a few years ago, but I… I don’t think he was okay. I think he might have been dying. And…” Hide stops and drinks his cappuccino in gulps. “It’s not important. He’s gone. That’s it. He’s gone.”

Haise feels like he should be doing something to comfort him and Hide seems to catch the look on his face because he grins wide. “I’m fine, really. It’s fine. I started working more with Division II after he disappeared for good. Ended up dropping out of college to work more and because… Kamii wasn’t the same without him, I guess.”

He lapses into silence, staring into his cup like it can give him all of life’s answers.

“It’s not okay,” Haise blurts. “And it’s okay if _you_ aren’t okay. He seems to have been a very important person to you and it’s okay if you’re not okay that he’s gone.”

Hide swallows. “Thanks, Sasaki-san.”

“Haise,” he corrects gently. Lord knows that after bearing his soul to him, he’s at least earned the right to call him by his first name. And they’re going to be living together soon too. And Haise still can’t shake the feeling that he _knows_ Hide on some subconscious, deep level.

“Thanks, Haise-san,” Hide mumbles, but Haise doesn’t miss how the corners of his mouth tilt upwards.

Conversation flows between them easily now and they sit there and talk for what only feels like minutes, but when Haise next checks the clock, it’s nearly seven and they’ve been chatting for almost three hours and he still has to catch a train home to make dinner for the Quinx. “Oh. Shoot,” he says, interrupting Hide mid-sentence, “I promised them I’d be back in time for dinner.” Haise looks up at Hide, who also looks vaguely surprised that they’ve been here that long. “You want to come? Akira-san said that you were probably going to move into the Chateau. It might be good for you to get a feel for the place.”

“Sure!”

Hide’s grin has probably never been brighter.

 

 

The days before Hide moves into the Chateau are filled with frantic cleaning on Haise’s part, grumpiness on Shirazu and Urie’s part, and actual legitimate suspicion on Saiko and Mutsuki’s part. They all get along wonderfully with Hide ( _now_ ), but Saiko and Mutsuki can’t seem to understand the sudden change in behavior between Haise and Hide. Shirazu still holds his suspicions as well, but he’s not saying _anything_. He’s just grumpy that he’s being roped into doing household chores (and a fair amount of Saiko’s as well, that _minx_ ).

Hide arrives with a rolling suitcase in each hand, a dufflebag slung over one shoulder, and a backpack. Akira is also doing her part in helping him out by carrying a single box. Hide, having already seen the Chateau thanks to his dinner with the Quinx the week before, knows exactly where his room is. He is, however, very amazed by the fact that it’s much cleaner than the last time.

“You didn’t have to clean for me, Haise-san,” Hide says, bumping his shoulder lightly on his way past. Hide has the last spare room on the ground floor, sandwiched between Saiko’s and Mutsuki’s. He strides in confidently, followed by Haise and Akira, who plops the box in her hands on his desk as soon as she can.

“Wouldn’t want to make a bad first impression on your first night in the house though!” Haise says. Akira glances between them then rolls her eyes and makes to leave.

“I’m assuming everything will be fine here?”

“Ah yes,” Hide murmurs. “Thanks for your help moving, Akira-san!”

She slips out after giving Haise a _play-nice_ look, which Haise looks rather affronted to be given at all.

“I’ll um… leave you to settle in then, Hide-san. Dinner will be around 6:30.” Haise does not appear to want to leave him alone though. He hovers in the hallway for a while before truly leaving and Hide has to contain his laughter. He unpacks the box Akira had brought up first. It holds miscellaneous office things and some books, a couple posters and some pictures.

He sets his meager collection of books (it’s nowhere near as large as Haise’s) on the top shelf of his small bookshelf, moves the office supplies onto his desk, and carefully removes the posters and pictures, leaving them on the desk to be taken care of later. He breaks down the box and goes about unpacking the rest of his bags.

It doesn’t take him long before he returns to his desk to put up his posters. His favorite _Red Dragon_ poster goes over his bed. The other one, he tacks to the wall over his desk.

He gazes over the pictures. Only two are framed, the rest are loose. He swears softly as he realizes that most of them are of him and Kaneki. They weren’t supposed to come with him. They’d made it into his baggage completely on accident.

Hide leans against the desk and sighs. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to do this. Sure, he had been bugging Akira to let him on their team so he could re-enter Kaneki’s life even if he didn’t remember, but he hadn’t quite understood how difficult it would be.

There was no doubt in his mind that Haise was Kaneki. He was what Kaneki could have been if he hadn’t been used and abused for his whole life.

Hide gently starts to gather the photos of him and Kaneki together – from their childhood, from high school, from their first day at Kamii, from their _life_ – and, though it pains him, shoves them into the back of a drawer in his desk. He can’t risk Haise finding them. He can’t risk Haise remembering.

There are three photos left. One of him at his high school graduation (before Kaneki had found him), one of his parents at the hospital, holding a tiny baby Hide, and one from elementary school with his parents and his grandparents from both sides before they had died.

He sighs again, sets the framed picture of his parents and him as a baby on his desk, and leaves the other two sitting there.

His life is so empty without Kaneki in it.

 

 

Hide appears in Haise’s dreams the entire first week that he’s living downstairs in the Chateau. Or at least, Haise thinks that it’s Hide. His face is shadowed in all of them, but his hair always gives him away. The monster shows up a few times too, never saying anything substantial but always muttering incoherently.

Haise wakes up the seventh day just before five in the morning, feeling like he’s been hit by a bus.

In his dream, he had snatches of conversation with Hide, similar to the snatches that he had _thought_ he had heard when he was with Hide at :re.

_“You’d be eaten in a second…”_

_“Wh… What do you mean, incomprehensible…”_

_“It’s no use, I’d fall asleep after five seconds…”_

_“If I were a ghoul, you would be very dead…”_

_“Don’t do weird things! This shop is the only connection I have…”_

_“Sorry to say this but… Give it up!”_

_“Gotta go to work… Good luck delusion-boy!”_

Haise frowns as he writes down as much of the conversation he remembers from before the monster had appeared and he’d suddenly been thrust into the black and white checkered room.

 _“Stop!”_ the monster had roared at him. _“They’re_ mine _!”_ He’d fallen back into incoherent mumbling right away, but Haise is certain that those three words had been directed at him.

Haise shakes his head, finishing the entry in his dream journal. There’s no way he’s going to sleep anymore, which is unfortunate since he feels almost more drained that he had when he went to sleep to begin with.

He pulls himself out of bed and decides to read in the living room until his Squad wakes up.

Hide is sitting in the living room with his laptop in front of him when Haise walks into the room. Haise watches him stare at the screen, Hide’s fingers flexing and curling repeatedly into a fist. Haise clears his throat. Hide jumps and glances at him.

“Haise-san,” Hide mutters, bringing a hand to his chest. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

“You should be asleep,” Haise points out.

“So should you,” Hide counters.

“Touché.”

Haise hesitates to sit on the other end of the couch from him. “It’s five in the morning. Why are you up?” Hide asks him, examining his face.

Haise shrugs. “It happens sometimes. I just can’t sleep.”

“You look exhausted.”

Haise sighs and leans his head back against the couch. “So maybe it happens every night?”

Hide frowns. “ _Every_ night? How often do you sleep through the night?”

“Maybe… Once a week? Twice if I’m lucky.” The look on Hide’s face is one of concern but also something Haise can’t identify. He coughs a bit in discomfort and Hide moves his gaze away from him. “Why are you up?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Hide answers. “I figured that I’d do some work instead.” He gestures to the computer on his knees. Haise nods in understanding, drawing his knees to his chest. He’s still thinking about his dreams over the last week. More specifically, the monster’s claim and Hide’s presence. It feels like a word is sitting on the very tip of his tongue, just out of reach, except it’s a vast understanding of something deep inside himself that sits there instead.

Haise shakes his head and cracks his book open. Hide returns to his work. After a while of relative silence, Haise’s eyes begin to droop and the words on the page begin swim. The next thing he knows, he’s being shaken awake by real Hide after a very short encounter with dream-Hide.

_“Eat me. I want to save you.”_

Haise stares at Hide, uncomprehending for a moment that it _isn’t_ still his dream. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Haise-san,” Hide murmurs. Mutsuki skirts around the edge of the room to get to the kitchen and Haise blinks a few times in order to clear the fog from his eyes.

Haise frowns. “I’m not so sure I didn’t,” he mutters.

 

 

“Is Nagachika settling in alright? 

Haise looks up from his coffee at Akira. It’s their biweekly check-in meeting. Haise never knows what to say, but Akira always has questions. “Ahh. Yeah. He seems to be fine.”

“And you’re getting along okay?”

“Yes, Akira-san,” Haise says with a sigh. “We’re fine. No problems whatsoever.”

“So you’re not just randomly upset with him for no reason?”

“No.”

“He doesn’t drive you nuts?”

“No.”

“You’re getting along perfectly?”

“Yes.” Haise scowls at her. “Why does that seem to surprise you?”

She shrugs and finishes off her sandwich. “No reason. I just distinctly remember a couple weeks ago you barged into my office declaring that you couldn’t possibly work with him is all.”

Haise laughs a little, his hand rubbing the back of his head. “Yeah well… Maybe I overreacted a little bit.”

“A little bit?” Akira raises an eyebrow. “I believe you said, ‘He has to go or I will.’”

Haise flinches but there’s a humorous glint in Akira’s eyes that tells him she’s only teasing him. “It was driving me nuts though… I couldn’t work like that.”

“And what changed?”

Haise frowns. “I… talked to him. And then… I don’t know. It just did.”

“You listened to me for once then? Wow. Imagine that.”

“Akira-san!” Haise exclaims indignantly just as a voice behind him calls his and Akira’s names. Hide walks up to their table, a massive grin, as always, present on his face. Akira raises an eyebrow at him as if to say ‘speak of the devil’ and Haise resists the urge to roll his eyes. Akira stands.

“I should get back to headquarters,” she explains. “Let me know if you need anything, Haise.”

“Of course,” Haise answers and Hide slides into the seat she vacates almost before she’s out the door. Haise suppresses the smile threatening to appear on his face at his readiness to hang out with him. “How are you Hide-san?”

“I’m _fantastic_!” Hide exclaims, bouncing giddily.

Haise lets his smile free. “Why is that?”

“Urie called me Nagachika today.” Haise frowns. “As in _just_ Nagachika. Not First Class Nagachika or anything. _Just_ Nagachika. I mean, that’s as personal as he gets, right?!”

Haise smiles at him sympathetically and Hide narrows his eyes at him.

“This is a very happy occurrence, Haise-san.”

“I believe you.”

“Your smile says ‘You’re nuts.’ But _I will have you know_ —“

Haise rolls his eyes and laughs, cutting him off.

“You’re fine, Hide-san,” he says. “I’m just teasing you.”

“Well then. I guess that’s another achievement for me to celebrate today. I got on Haise-san’s good side.”

Haise rolls his eyes and stands. “You already were, silly.”

 

 

“Hide-san,” Haise asks over coffee another day weeks later, “Do you ever…” He hesitates and Hide’s eyes narrow slightly in concentration. “Do you ever think about the past? 

Hide laughs a little. “Is that really what you wanted to ask, Haise-san?” His eyes are mischievous and Haise somehow gets the feeling that he knows. Hide sighs anyway and answers his question. “I do. All the time.” There’s a nostalgic smile forming on his lips. “Mostly about how different things have become the last three years.”

“But do… Do you…?”

“Do I what, Haise-san?” Hide asks gently. “You can tell or ask me anything you know.”

“Do you ever _dream_ about…?”

“The past?” Haise nods and Hide sucks in a breath. “Have you been having dreams?”

“Yes. They feel so real too that it’s hard for me to imagine that they aren’t situations of the past.”

“Like what?”

“Like… Sitting in a coffee shop with you.”

“Haise-san, we do that every Friday.”

“No but this is different. We’re younger and I’m pretty sure I have black hair. And there’s… there’s a girl with long magenta hair.”

If Hide stiffens at the mention of Rize, he doesn’t show it to Haise. “That’s a funny thing to be dreaming about…”

Haise watches him avoid his eyes and sip the drink in front of him. He doesn’t see the way that Hide’s hand curls into a white-knuckled fist under the table.

 

 

He always tries to keep them under wraps, keep them secret so he doesn’t worry anyone. Haise has become well accustomed to cutting off the scream in his throat before it leaves his mouth when he wakes up, terrorized and shaking, sweat pouring out of every pore, caught limbs flailing in his sheets 

But he can’t always. The Quinx always politely pretend like nothing happened at breakfast when he was sure they had heard him tearing his voice raw that morning upon waking. But he’d see Mutsuki and Saiko’s worried glances, Shirazu’s uneasy looks. He used to just brush it off and grin at them, content to move past the awful morning and take care of his subordinates.

Things are not like that with Hide living in the Chateau.

He doesn’t even comprehend that the screams are coming from him, doesn’t even realize he’s waking up. It’s so real; the pain in his eyes, his head pounding sharply, the panic of his sudden blindness, the _stench_ of rotting flowers, corpses, memories, his throat-aching screams, the manic need to resist, to kill, to eat, to _savethemohmygodpleasesavethem_ , it’s all so _real_ and so _painful_.

 _“Haise!”_ It’s Arima and it’s the monster and it’s everyone he’s ever known all at once yelling at him.

_“Haise! Haise! Calm down!”_

Hands grab at his wrists, he fights because it’s the only thing he knows how to do. But the hands are stronger than he is. They’re pulling him under water, they’re trying to drown him. They’re—

“Haise, open your eyes and look at me.”

They’re Hide’s. It’s just Hide’s voice. The constant stream of screams fades into soft sobs. He still can’t see. He can’t tell if his eyes are open. He’s afraid he won’t be able to see if he does.

“Haise, your eyes.” His breath hitches and he has to force it to even out before he cracks his eyes open. At first he thinks he might start screaming again because everything is dark, but then Hide’s face starts coming into focus and his rapid shallow breaths are slowing and getting deeper.

“That’s it, Haise,” Hide murmurs, “Just breathe. It was just a nightmare. You’re alright. You’re safe.”

Haise stares up into Hide’s eyes and does as he says. When he’s calmed enough, he tries to move his arms but Hide shakes his head, though he does loosen his grip slightly.

“You okay?” Hide asks gently as Haise turns his head to check the time.

A wave of humiliation and guilt washes over him as he registers the numbers _4:38 AM_. He feels his breath quicken ever so slightly. Hide also catches it.

“Hey, hey. Shhhh,” he breathes, releasing his wrists and slipping his hands into Haise’s instead so it doesn’t feel so confining. He swings himself off of Haise too, but Haise had hardly recognized that his weight was straddling him.

“I’m so sorry,” Haise says, near tears again. “I must have woken you. I’m so sorry.”

Hide hushes him softly. “Haise, you were terrified. It’s okay. You can’t stop your dreams.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Haise,” Hide says more firmly. “You have _nothing_ to apologize for.”

“God I must have woken everyone. I could have woken the dead.”

Hide only chuckles as Haise sits up, disconnecting one of their hands in the process. “You could certainly have woken the dead,” Hide agrees, though it isn’t spiteful at all.

Haise closes his eyes, another apology on his lips, when he’s reminded of being blind and his eyes shoot open to dispel the darkness. His mouth almost forms another cry, which dies in his throat. He feels a hand against his neck and the next thing he knows, he’s being pulled to Hide. He settles automatically against his chest, as though this is the most natural thing in the world.

“You have nothing to worry about here,” Hide murmurs in his ear. “No judgment, no stares, no pain, no nightmares, okay?”

Haise nods against his friend’s collarbone and a dull ache starts in his chest to the same rhythm as his increased heartbeat.

His hand remains joined with Hide’s until they get up an hour later.

 

 

Haise may be imagining it, but he _thinks_ that there are more touches, more looks, less space, less awkwardness between them after that night. Haise will notice Hide leaning toward him more often for no reason or feel the brush of his fingers on his shoulders, his neck, his arm, his lower back as he passes 

There’s more peace in his life now than he can ever remember there being, even as his heart races unexpectedly.

And it’s not as though his dreams stop, or the monster goes away, or he stops waking up screaming, he’s just _happier_ and more accepting of everything thrown at him with Hide close by.

After Hide wakes him up from screaming a third time, Haise talks about it in stumbling, sobbed words that he’s not sure even make sense to him. He just _trusts_ Hide to understand, to not treat him any differently.

“It was just… counting and scratching and centipedes and cracked knuckles and severed appendages and blood and screams and rotting corpses and death and anguish and fire and pain in my eyes and sweet tastes in my mouth and-and-and—“

Hide shushes him gently, hand running through his hair and pulling him to him. Haise’s hand grips his almost in a death grip and he can’t breathe suddenly with what he’s trying to get out.

“You were _there_ ,” Haise chokes out. “You were there and I—“

His vision goes dark and when he wakes up again, Hide is hovering over him worriedly asking him what happened. But Haise can’t remember what they were talking about or why Hide looks so frantic.

 

 

“You’re sure, Nagachika?” Haise overhears Akira speaking from around the corner when on his way to lunch with the Quinx and slows to a stop. He doesn’t like the conspiratorial tone of her voice. He assumes that Hide nods, though he doesn’t see him. “He’s had weird dreams before. It could be something else like that.” Haise sucks in a breath. They could only be talking about him. 

“No. He _specifically_ mentioned a conversation he and I had in Anteiku once before his accident. And glimpses of what happened in V-14, possibly even Yamori torturing him.” Hide pauses and Haise hears Akira sigh. “He remembers _something_ , Akira. Something to do with me. And that’s dangerous.”

“You were the one that wanted on his team, Nagachika. I tried to tell you this might happen.”

“But he _can’t_ remember, Akira. It… It would break him again. I can’t watch that happen to him again.”

“And I _warned_ you.”

“I was careful!”

“You were his _best friend_ ¸ Nagachika. Of course he remembered you to some extent…”

Haise turns and walks in the opposite direction as quickly as he can because he’s fairly sure that he’s going to be sick.

When Hide walks into the office later, he senses a coldness coming off of Haise but he can’t place where it came from.

“You okay, Haise?”

“Fine.” Hide seems to be the only person who recognizes the sharpness in his tone or the way he turns his body away from him as Hide sits down. His heart aches vaguely but he doesn’t push it.

Haise stares at his computer screen and resists the urge to spill all his troubles and worries to Hide.

 

 

The Quinx all feel a coldness in the air. It’s been lingering for the last few weeks ever since Hide and Haise stopped doing their coffee dates. Saiko is especially put out that ‘Maman’ and ‘Papa’ don’t seem to be speaking to each other in anything other than short, clipped, professional responses, though none of them understand why.

They noticed the glances, the touches, and how Hide was the only one with the nerve to calm Haise when he woke up screaming.

Saiko had been the first to figure out that her Maman and Papa loved each other very much to some extent, not really the dating and kissing extent yet but she had hoped it would happen soon.

Mutsuki had noticed but he was too polite to take part in the conversation because he looked up to them both too much.

Urie could care less what Nagachika and Sasaki did in their free time as long as it didn’t affect how well they worked with each other and with the rest of the team. He wasn’t about to lose a promotion because they were too distracted by each other to do their jobs.

Shirazu was oblivious as always and turned bright red as he tried to stammer out a response to Saiko’s suggestion that they were something more.

But now all their speculation had frozen with the tenseness between them. No one seemed to know how or when it started let alone _why_. At first Saiko had been determined to get to the bottom of it, but then she had noticed the way that Haise shrank away from one of Hide’s touches early on and she’d discovered she was at a loss.

Hide noticed it too but he figured that it was residual horror from one of his nightmares or something and left it alone. _Anything but for it to mean that Haise was scared of him_.

It’s been three weeks and even Urie is starting to get fed up with the distance and ice between them. Saiko and Mutsuki corner Hide before he can reach the office.

“What’s _up with you two?_ ” Saiko demands and Hide frowns.

“Who?”

“You and _Maman_! Who else would I be talking about?”

“Saiko,” Mutsuki starts, “maybe you shouldn’t be—“

“No, Mucchan. I’m sick of this. I have to know.” She resolutely crosses her arms over her chest and raises an eyebrow at Hide. “Well? What happened?”

Hide looks between the two of them and sighs, deflating a little. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I… I guess I did something that upset him? I don’t know.”

Saiko’s hardness melts a little when she sees her Papa looking so lost.

“Have you talked to him, Hide-san?” Mutsuki asks gently.

He shakes his head. “He hasn’t given me the chance. He just—,“ He’s cut off by his phone ringing very loudly in his pocket. Hide sighs and shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.” He offers them a small smile as he reaches for his phone. “Thanks for worrying though, Saiko, Mutsuki.”

He answers his phone before they can protest. “Hel—“

“Go back to the Chateau right now, Nagachika,” Akira’s voice says, sharp and almost angry.

“What? Why?”

“Haise went looking for files on Amon and the Eyepatch ghoul.”

Hide can feel all the blood rush out of his face, his heart drop to his feet. He turns away from Mutsuki and Saiko and has to stop himself from sprinting away from them for the exit. “What did he find out?”

“A bunch of redacted info mainly. I found him in file storage looking for more though. Had a bit of an identity crisis and screamed at me.”

“Is he okay? Are _you_ okay?” He gathers his things quickly into his briefcase and hurries to the doors of the building, not caring if he’s drawing looks.

“Oh _I’m_ fine. I calmed him down enough to get across to him that who he was in the past doesn’t matter, especially not to the people that really matter. He’s himself no matter what name he goes by.”

Hide is actually running now, despite this information. “And?”

“And I’m not sure he really believed me but I sent him home for the rest of the day and called you. Figured you would be able to help him more than I can.”

Hide curses the distance that’s grown between him and Haise the last few weeks because he’s not sure if Akira is right about that anymore. Stiffly he says, “Alright. I’m on my way home then. Thanks Akira-san.”

“Be gentle with him, Nagachika. He’s trying to cross uncharted territory for him. If you push too much it might crack the barrier he’s built and just release everything.”

“Noted.” He hangs up and slows in his race for the train long enough to stuff his phone in his pocket and pull out a rail pass.

He’s standing outside the Chateau, breathing hard from running when he realizes that he doesn’t know what he’s going to say or how he’s going to help Haise this time. He’s going in completely blind. But it doesn’t scare him, not really. Haise has always been Kaneki to him. But Haise has also always been Haise. The two can’t be separated and Hide cannot bear the thought of being separated from either of them ever again.

He doesn’t know what happened between them to make Haise so cold, but he’s going to fix it.

He pushes open the door and toes off his shoes. He doesn’t have to look far for Haise. He standing at the counter in the kitchen, a pot of coffee brewing to his side, his eyes fixated on his bleeding hand. Hide feels something in him choke as he rushes forward and envelops Haise’s hand in his and drags it to the sink, running it under cold water. He had worried about nothing though because the cut has already healed.

Haise jerks his hand out of his grasp and dries it on his pant leg. “Shouldn’t you be at work?” he asks, voice full of ice as he pours a cup of coffee and moves to take the stairs, leaving Hide gaping at him.

He follows quickly though. Haise can’t just leave him behind. “Akira-san sent me here,” Hide says.

“Oh really? I guess that makes two of us.”

“She was worried about you.”

He hums non-committedly as he reaches the landing.

“She thought I might be able to help more than her.”

Haise lets out a hiss and comes to a stop in front of his bedroom door. “I don’t know why she would think that,” he says finally and opens the door. He tries to slam it in Hide’s face but he—ow—sticks his foot in before Haise can. “Hide. Go away.”

“Never,” Hide says, voice hard.

“Hide—“

“Haise, what happened?” Haise looks at him quizzically and Hide elaborates. “I thought—no I could have _sworn_ —that there was something between us. That we were close and could share everything with each other. But then you pulled away and I… did I do something? Are you angry with me? What did I _do_ , Haise?”

Haise swallows and gives up on closing the door. Hide lets himself in slowly and shuts the door behind him just in case any of the Quinx come home early. They’re both silent for a long stretch then—

“Akira-san said that you went looking for something about your past. Has it been—“

“Of _course_ she told you,” Haise says with a bitter laugh. It’s not something Hide ever wanted to hear from Haise, let alone directed at him. “You two were always pretty buddy-buddy.” Hide draws back but Haise just sighs, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “I heard you two talking about me, you know. A few weeks ago. I didn’t want to think that you would talk about me like that, thought that I could trust you.”

All of Hide’s expectations absolutely deflate right then. “How much did you hear?”

“Enough to know that you knew me. I always knew that Akira knew more than she was letting on but I let it slide because she’s been like a mother to me. But you… You _walked into my life_ and tried to pretend like it was the _first time_ we’d ever met. Even after I told you that you appeared in dreams that felt like memories. Even after _everything_ you pretended not to know _anything_.”

“Haise—“

“No, Hide. You don’t understand. That _monster_ in my head terrorized me, tried to make me see, tried to stop me from getting closer to you. And you… you just—did you ever want me for me? Or was I always just _him_?”

“Haise you have to let me explain.”

“ _No_. I don’t want to hear any more _bullshit_ excuses! This is my life and I don’t want anyone else controlling how much I remember anymore!”

“Haise it would break you.”

“I don’t _care_ Hide.”

“You should!” And now it’s Hide who’s angry. Who’s yelling and upset. “You fucking should, Haise, because it isn’t just about _you_. I watched you go through hell and back and I’ll be fucking _damned_ if I have to watch it again. I’m not going to stand on the sidelines this time. I’m…” His voice breaks and he suddenly feels three years’ worth of tears and sorrow pressing at the back of his eyes. The fight leaves him. “I can’t, Haise. I can’t watch you break again.”

He’s tired. He’s tired of pretending not to know Kaneki. He’s tired of walking around Haise like anything he says might break the floodgate. He’s tired of not knowing where he stands. And he’s tired of not being with Haise. He backs against the door and sinks to the floor, burying his hands in his hair.

They’re completely silent for a long time. Hide’s admission hangs in the air and suffocates him. Finally, he can’t take it anymore. He pushes himself up and leaves.

“Hide,” Haise calls and but Hide slams the door behind him.

 

 

The Quinx trickle home. Haise emerges from his room and pretends that everything is fine. He cooks dinner like normal. He talks with them about their days. Saiko and Mutsuki keep glancing at Hide’s empty place at the table but say nothing. 

Shirazu and Urie go off to train while Haise and Mutsuki clear the table. Saiko goes to her room. It’s painfully normal. Normal like before Hide had come into their lives.

Haise’s heart hurts.

He heads to bed, shrugging off Mutsuki’s concern with a small complaint about a headache. He falls into a restless sleep almost immediately, for once.

He hears the door slam open even as his screams drown out all thoughts to protect himself. Arms wrap around him and Hide’s scent and warmth envelop him. “I’m sorry,” Haise sobs. “I’m sorry, Hide. I’m so sorry. Forgive me. I didn’t want to. Hide. _Hide_.”

“Shhhh, Haise. It’s okay,” Hide mumbles in his ear. Haise’s fingers bury themselves in the back of his shirt. Hide pulls him up into sitting position. He runs his fingers through Haise’s hair, trying to calm him. “I’m here, shhhh.”

“I ate you. Why don’t you hate me? I _ate you_.”

Hide shushes him, holding Haise’s face, pressing their foreheads together, wiping his tears away with his thumbs. Haise keeps mumbling and Hide hushes him. “It was a necessary sacrifice,” he breathes finally when Haise has mostly calmed. “For you. For your survival.”

Haise chokes back another sob. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Hide murmurs. “I wanted so much to not watch you suffer again that I didn’t consider what kind of suffering you were already enduring.” Haise’s face is buried in his collarbone and Hide sighs, fingers restlessly running through Haise’s hair. “What do you want to know?”

“How long have I known you?”

“You as in Haise? A year. Your soul? Fourteen…? Fifteen years?” Hide can’t remember the exact number off the top of his head. Haise shudders against him and Hide almost thinks he’s going to start spewing apologies again. “Haise, you’re still you, even if you don’t remember. You don’t have to remember to be whole. You… You’ve always just been Haise, to me. I might have come into this, begged Akira to let me on your team, because I wanted to be near my best friend again, but you’ve always been the same to me. You’ve always been Haise and Kaneki simultaneously. You’ve always been everything to me, no matter what your name is.”

Haise starts laughing suddenly, lifting his head, and Hide falters. “When I first met you, I thought I knew you,” Haise explains. “I thought I knew you and it frightened me so I treated you awfully and tried to tell Akira that we didn’t work well together.” Hide raises an eyebrow and Haise shrugs. “I wasn’t wrong.”

“Touché,” Hide murmurs. They’re quiet for the longest time. Then Hide says, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“You had good reason not to.” He lets himself lay down and Hide follows him, curling around him from behind. They fall into silence again and Haise turns to him. It’s not as early in the morning as it normally is when Haise wakes up screaming, hardly even past midnight.

“If—Haise, if you want to start remembering, then… I won’t stop you.” Hide’s grip on his waist tightens. “You were right. It’s your life and your choice.”

Haise places a hand on his cheek and shakes his head. Hide frowns. “I’m scared to, honestly. Between you and… Kaneki, I guess is his name, I’m not sure I want to know.”

“If you ever have questions…” Hide says but Haise cuts him off with his lips.

“For now I’m content,” Haise breathes, nudging his nose against Hide’s. Hide smiles, his eyes heavy, sleepy, unable to quite believe he’s finally reached this point. Haise watches him fall asleep and lets himself drift off, curled in Hide’s arms.

 

 

After that, Hide and Haise nearly always end up asleep in the same bed. It is never agreed upon out loud, it just happens. None of the Quinx seem bothered by it. Saiko is absolutely _thrilled_. They keep their PDA limited to hand-holding but practically everyone in the entire CCG knows within a week. Akira actually calls them into her office to give them the ‘inter-office romance’ talk, during most of which Haise is red-faced and Hide is completely nonchalant 

They sleep in Haise’s bed most of the time. Sometimes Haise will ask him questions while they wait for sleep to take them. Sometimes Hide will even have proper answers. Mostly they sleep contentedly, curling around each other.

This is how Haise learns that Hide also has nightmares. He never screams but Haise will sometimes wake to his quick shallow breaths turning to gasping sobs or the jerk of his limbs as though he’s coming out of a freefall.

Hide’s nightmares are a softer, more indirect terror than Haise’s. He refuses to talk about them and Haise learns quickly not to ask. Instead, he runs his fingers through Hide’s hair, along his arms, down his back; kisses his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, his lips; does anything he can to comfort him.

“Haise,” Hide finally murmurs as an indicator that he’ll be fine. Haise’s fingers slow, though they remain tangled in his hair. He presses his forehead to Hide’s, running the pad of one thumb across his cheek. Hide’s tired gaze is thankful.

“Sometimes I wonder just how much you’ve sacrificed for me,” Haise breathes as they lay there in each other’s arms. It’s almost six am, late enough that they could get up without worrying the Quinx but early enough to not want to yet. The tips of Haise’s fingers trace a path down Hide’s arm as Hide sucks in a breath and holds it.

“Not enough,” he mumbles after a moment of silence.

Haise shoots him a disapproving look. “I beg to differ.”

Hide shakes his head, kisses him chastely. “You don’t know, Haise,” Hide murmurs against his lips.

“Only because you won’t tell me.”

Hide smiles and shakes his head again. “It isn’t important.”

“It is to me.”

Hide regards him with a soft searching gaze for a moment, then pulls away to tug his shirt over his head. Haise doesn’t understand until he remembers months earlier when he’d woken from a nightmare of sweet tasting flesh and a gentle voice begging, _‘Eat me_ ’ to spew apologies at Hide.

Haise thinks his vision might being going sideways as he stares at the scars that mar the flesh of Hide’s shoulder. His eyes refuse to focus and he says in a faraway voice, “I did this.”

“No,” Hide says. “I did. For you.” Haise still seems stunned and uncomprehending so Hide sighs and tugs the back of his head until their lips meet. Haise responds after a couple seconds, then, red-faced, buries his face in Hide’s scarred shoulder. “What your dreams don’t show you is the context of the situation,” Hide explains softly in his ear. “So you end up blaming yourself for things that you had no control over.”

“Tell me the context then,” Haise mumbles, face still resolutely pressed into his shoulder. Hide sighs and buries one hand in Haise’s hair.

He contemplates for a moment then speaks slowly. “You… were not in your right mind and you were injured very badly with no way to escape except through a tunnel guarded by… a powerful person. The only way you could have survived was if you healed and had the strength to fight. So I… left my post to find you and give you what you needed. You didn’t want to. I made you.”

Haise refuses to lift his head so Hide repeats, “Haise, I made you. I didn’t give you a choice.”

When Haise turns his head to face him, there are tears in his eyes. “Why would you do that?”

Hide chuckles a little lowly in his throat. “Because I love you, silly.” Haise’s breath catches but Hide seems oblivious to it. “I would have sacrificed so much more but you wouldn’t ever allow that.”

“What did you say?” Haise mutters.

“You wouldn’t ever allow that?”

“No before.”

“I love you?” Haise is staring at him like he’s an alien and Hide raises his eyebrows in disbelief. “How did you think I felt, Haise?” Haise, wide-eyed, just shakes his head like he’s at a loss. Hide laughs and finds Haise’s hand with his own, threading their fingers together. “Did you think I wasn’t in this for the long haul? I’ve been in love with you since before you even remember me, Haise. Since you went by Kaneki and we were snot-nosed kids. You’re it for me.” Then, as though surprised by his own words, he tightens his grip on Haise’s hand and repeats, softer, “You’re it for me.”

Haise struggles to find his voice. “Were… Were we ever…?”

“ _This_?” Hide holds their hands up and shakes his head. “I was too much of a coward and we were both too awkward. And then your accident happened and you left and… shit hit the fan. And I was left to wait until you were stable enough to see me without it triggering your entire life.”

They’re quiet for a while and Hide almost believes that Haise has gone back to sleep when he sits up and hovers over him. “I’m going to go start on breakfast,” he murmurs and moves to get up. Then, thinking better of it, leans down and kisses Hide heatedly and a little sloppily until they’re both breathless. Smiling, Haise pulls back and says, “I love you too, you know,” and bounds off the bed, leaving Hide there, laughing with the little breath he has.

 

 

“Hide… Stop… Too loud.” 

Haise, Hide learns, mumbles in his sleep. Kaneki did too, once upon a time, but Haise’s mumblings are different from Kaneki’s. They’re gentle, often he has a smile on his face. Kaneki’s were troubled and full of frowning.

“Who’re you calling loser?”

Hide likes to listen to him talk in his sleep in the small hours of the morning when he can’t sleep. Haise sleeps through the night more often than Hide does these days and he can’t find it in him to complain about the lack of sleep. Not when he gets to listen to the one-sided conversations Haise has with people from his past.

“Idiot,” Haise whispers fondly.

“You must dream about me _a lot_ ,” Hide mutters under his breath as he stares at the email in his inbox on the screen in front of him. As though he hears him, Haise sighs. Hide smiles to himself. He’s completely alright with being the good in Haise’s dreams. He’s _not_ alright with being so completely distracted from what he’s working on because of him though.

He’s considering moving downstairs when Haise breathes, “No, mom.” His face starts to scrunch up and Hide knows that he might be straying into a nightmare. He sighs. He’s staying put then, just in case.

“Hide’s just… _No_. Mom, _no_.”

Hide swallows and watches Haise flinch in his sleep. With luck, he’d forget completely about his dream when he woke up. He turns his eyes back to the screen, scanning over the words _experiment_ , _Sunlit Garden_ , _breeding ground_ , and _Cochlea_ with dull eyes. The email just confirms his suspicions.

He looks at Haise as he brings a hand to his mouth thoughtfully.

“… Love you.”

Hide closes his laptop and strides across the room to slip back in bed. He drapes an arm around Haise, who instinctively turns and curls into his warmth with a happy sigh, _“Hide.”_

Emails can wait, he thinks as he buries his nose in Haise’s two-toned hair and draws him close.

He teases Haise relentlessly in the morning, of course.

“How were your dreams, Haise?” he asks as Haise prepares breakfast. The latter frowns.

“Good, I guess? I don’t actually remember anything from them,” Haise answers, flipping a pancake.

“I do,” Hide says and when Haise glances at him he doesn’t miss the mischievous glint in his eye. “I think you could say… I’m literally the man of your dreams.”

Shirazu, sitting at the counter with a glass of orange juice in front of him, does a glorious spit-take that Hide commits to memory while Mutsuki stumbles with a bowl in hand, nearly dropping it. Haise’s face has turned a gorgeous shade of red while Hide comes up behind him. He refuses to look anywhere but directly at the pan he’s cooking in.

“Did you know you talk in your sleep, Haise?” Hide murmurs in his ear and if possible, Haise turns an even darker red.

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Haise stammers.

“You say my name a lot.”

“H-Hide!”

“Yes! Exactly like that!”

Haise, red as a tomato, turns around with his spatula raised and says firmly, “If you can’t behave in the kitchen, then I have to banish you.”

“Awww. Haise!”

“You’re going to make me burn breakfast!”

“Fine, fine, I’ll stop.”

Haise gives him one final half-hearted glare and turns back to his cooking.

Hide can’t help himself. He puts on his best mimic of Haise’s voice and breathes, “Hide… Stop…”

“ _Out!_ ” Haise yells as he whirls around and points to the door, where Hide is already fleeing with a soft cackle. Mutsuki rolls his eyes while Shirazu merely looks between Hide’s retreating form and Haise dumbly.

“Saiko’s gonna lose it when she realizes she missed this,” he mutters under his breath.

Hide gets to Haise’s bedroom and opens up his laptop again. He shoots off a very quick email and goes to take a shower.

_‘I’ll take care of it – NH’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prepare yourselves. The angst and suffering are coming.


	2. Were They Worth It?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haise waits while Hide turns the world on its head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is probably full of plot holes. Please forgive me.

It’s early one morning when it all comes crashing down.

“Haise! Haise, wake up!” Hide’s voice is quiet but urgent. He’s shaking his shoulders. Haise is fairly sure he hadn’t been screaming. “Haise!” Haise cracks open his eyes and Hide’s hovering over him, an expression on his face that he can’t read. His stomach starts tying itself in knots.

“Hide? What’s wrong? Was I screaming in my sleep again?” he asks, eyes still laden with sleep.

“No. No you weren’t. I— _shit_ —I fucked up. I fucked up, Haise.”

Haise is sitting up, completely alert almost immediately. His hands find their way to Hide’s face, holding him trying to sooth him. “What do you mean?” he demands softly. “Did you have another nightmare?”

Hide pulls out of his grasp, holding his hands tightly instead. “No, Haise. I… _Goddammit._ I messed up. I messed up big time.”

“What happened?”

“I-I can’t. I can’t tell you. _Shit._ I can’t implicate you or the kids in any way.”

“Hide—“

“I _fucked up_ , Haise. Death-penalty fucked up.”

Haise feels his body turn to ice. Even his hands are numb. “What?” he asks, dazed.

“I fucked up and they’re going to come for me.”

“Who?”

“The CCG. V.”

“What are you—Hide—“

“I’m a double agent, Haise. A mole.”

Haise stares at him, it’s still not quite hitting him what he’s being told. Hide lets loose another string of swears and dives down to kiss him desperately. Haise thinks he feels tears on his cheeks. “I couldn’t keep our ending happy,” Hide chokes out between kisses. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re leaving?” Haise asks when Hide pulls himself away. He grips his shirt, holding him close. Hide nods. “You can’t.”

“I have to Haise. They’ll kill me.”

“We can talk to Arima. We can—“

“He’s _one of them_ , Haise! V! The CCG! Aogiri! It’s all one big clusterfuck!” He quiets his voice quickly as he realizes he’s snapping. Hide shakes his head and kisses Haise again. “I have to go. I have to disappear. Haise, I have to—“

Haise cuts him off with an absolutely _searing_ kiss, all open-mouths and teeth. Haise kisses him as though that will make this bad dream he must be having disappear. When Hide rips away from it after about ten seconds it’s all he can do not to melt into Haise completely.

“Haise, I love you,” he says, pressing his forehead to Haise’s. Haise shakes his head and grips the front of his shirt. It sounds too much like a goodbye. “I love you,” Hide says again. “No matter what they tell you about me, that’s the truth, okay? I love you.”

“Hide—“

“Listen to me, Haise. Don’t look for me. You’ll know what I did when it happens, when it shows up on the news. You’ll know. It’s done and it can’t be undone. Don’t look for me, just do your job and let it all blow over okay? Train the kids. Take care of them, double for me. And no matter what dreams come up, no matter what you start to remember or don’t of your past, stay strong. When—if it’s safe again, I’ll find you. I promise, I’ll find you.”

“But, Hide—“

“Haise, do you trust me?”

Haise looks into his eyes, swallows, and says, “With my life.”

“Then trust me now. I _will find you_.”

Haise is crying now too, gripping his shirt like it’s his lifeline. Hide looks at him and cannot believe that this is happening, that he has to leave this behind. He holds Haise close, kisses him once more, twice more, three times more, then forces himself to tear out of those arms, picks up the duffel bag he had packed before coming to wake Haise, and backs out of the room.

He takes one final look at Haise, _his_ Haise, says again, “I’ll find you” and “I love you” and runs.

Haise sits in the 4am darkness feeling like he’s just been gutted.

 

 

“A video from an anonymous source within the Commission for Counter-Ghoul Intelligence has emerged and taken the internet by storm this morning. The organization has long been criticized by minority parties for how brutally it deals with ghouls as well as any human allies found to be associated with them. However, this video takes that criticism to a new level. Some of this footage may be disturbing and isn’t suitable for younger viewers.”

 _“They tore apart my family. They paint us like some kind of monster when they’re the monsters_.”

_“They don’t tell you what goes on in Cochlea. They don’t tell you about how they crush ghouls down to liquid when they’re no longer useful for information.”_

_“When a human kills someone, they get arrested and they go through a trial and are probably imprisoned. When a ghoul kills someone, they get exterminated. No trial. No questions. It doesn’t matter if we killed some child molester so that we could take some of the bad out of the world while we eat. We’re still killed for it.”_

_“AHHHHHHH!”_

“What you just heard there were testimonies _from ghouls_. And that last bit _was_ one of Cochlea’s ‘ghoul compactors’ in action. That was only a 45 second clip of the full 5 minute video that was released today. The timing of this video comes not long after a brutal look into the world of Investigator Shiki Kijima, who called out ghoul _Rose_ earlier this week. While it appears the new footage is a response to Kijima’s brutality, no connection has been made between their creators, aside from the fact that they are sourced from the CCG. So far the CCG has been unreachable for comment or verification but our video experts can’t find any evidence of tampering. We hope to have more information for you tonight.”

 

  

“We assume the five of you have seen the news.” Arima’s voice is hard. All hopes that this might _possibly_ be a social visit automatically fly out of Haise’s mind. Haise nods along with the rest of the Quinx. Akira stands next to Arima with her arms crossed. “You may have noticed that we have a mole.” Another nod. “It was Nagachika Hideyoshi.”

The protests start falling from the Quinx Squad’s lips before Arima gets Hide’s name out fully.

“Papa wouldn’t!” Saiko yells. “He’s too good!”

“I’m with Saiko,” Shirazu agrees, “He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.”

“He doesn’t seem like the kind of person to do that,” Mutsuki objects.

“He _was_ loyal,” Urie seems more thoughtful than actually upset.

Haise sits and listens to them, knowing he should also object but not having the energy to. “Haise?” Akira turns her gaze to him. “No objections?”

His mouth is dry. “I-I don’t believe you. But he also didn’t come home last night.”

Saiko glares at him. “How can you not believe in Papa?! _Maman_ how could you?!”

Arima reclaims the focus of the conversation with a single clearing of his throat. “I didn’t come here to debate with you the validity of Nagachika’s presence here. We know he was the mole and we have to ask you if you’ve seen or heard anything from him since he left the office yesterday.”

“How do you _know_?!” Saiko demands, voice still a little shrill, on her feet with her hands curled in fists.

“Yonebayashi sit down,” Akira orders. “I don’t like this anymore than you do, but he would _be here_ if he hadn’t known we were coming for him.” Saiko sits back down on the couch next to Haise again and Haise gently brings a hand to rest on her shoulder. “Now, when was the last time you all talked to him?”

“Breakfast yesterday,” Mutsuki answers, though he seems reluctant to say anything.

“He sparred with me yesterday afternoon around 3,” Urie says.

“He had lunch with me and Sassan,” Shirazu says.

Akira looks at Saiko and raises an eyebrow to which the girl lets out a huff and says, “He brought me ice cream before he went off to train with Kuki.” Urie bristles at the use of his first name.

Haise stares ahead and tries to tune out everything around him, tries to grasp at some semblance of sanity, of _normalcy_.

“Haise?” The command in Arima’s voice is apparent.

Haise licks his lips and says, “He… said he had extra work to do and that I shouldn’t wait up for him when I was on my way out of Headquarters. That he’d be home late probably but that he would come home.” Haise swallows. “He didn’t.” He wishes he could just stand up and leave but he doesn’t have the guts to walk out on Arima and he has to set an example for the Quinx.

“Are you sure?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Haise snaps, “We slept in the same bed. I would have known if he came home.”

 _“I’m a double agent, Haise. A mole.”_ Haise tries to shut off the conversation they had had that morning but it just kept playing on repeat in his head. He buries his hands in his hand and leans his elbows on his knees.

“I can’t believe that he’d do this,” Haise mutters to the ground.

“The clips traced back to him,” Arima says.

_“I fucked up, Haise. Death-penalty fucked up.”_

“He fooled all of us, Haise,” Akira says, voice gentler than Arima’s but still firm. “He worked here for 4 years. No one expected it.”

_“… that’s the truth, okay? I love you.”_

“No,” Haise gasps, “No. He wouldn’t lie. Not to me.”

Akira gazes at him a moment then murmurs, “There’s stuff he hid even from you.”

Haise stands and stalks out of the room. He can’t be there. He’s suffocating.

 

 

They’re given a new case or rather they become part of a new case, a new raid to take place. _Rose_. They are to capture Rose.

Haise’s dreams become a mix of memories, terrors, and Hide. Except one. There is a little boy with pure white hair who just clings to his pant-leg and says, _“Please don’t erase me_.”

Haise wakes up crying for some reason and there’s no Hide to explain to him who the little boy is.

He wakes up screaming at least once a week, often with Hide’s name on his lips. The Quinx all but ignore it. The worried glances re-emerge. Saiko and Mutsuki even let themselves into his room a few times to check on him once he’s calmed.

 _“I’m fine,”_ he snaps at them.

He’s not.

He takes all his dreams as memories now, writes them down when he wakes or at least as much as he can piece together. All but the ones with Hide, all searing heat and tangled bodies that leave him awake, cold, and longing. Those he keeps locked in his head, afraid to put them down on paper in case they never appear again.

By the time they’re ready to capture Rose, they’ve proven that he has Aogiri ties.

The night before the raid, he dreams of Hide whispering, _“I love you_ ” with Arima’s quinque over his head. He screams as it goes through his chest, as he disappears and Arima is left hovering over him.

_“Again, Haise.”_

_“Arima, I can’t…. I can’t stand. ”_

_“You must, Haise. Do your job. Kill just as I do. You are my quinque… Unless, Haise… Would you like to die again?”_

Arima’s quinque pierces his eyes and Hide’s torso and their screams of agony mix until Haise is sitting upright in bed, gasping screams falling from his mouth. He swallows them quickly, all cold sweat and fearful of the shadows.

He believes it’s the first time he’s ever truly feared Arima.

 

 

Rose – Kanae von Rosewald – and Aogiri executive Noro are both exterminated without hitch.

The Quinx and Haise return to the Chateau battered and bruised but all alive. Haise makes coffee and moves to prepare a meal when a spike of pain shoots through his head and he stumbles. Mutsuki is by his side immediately.

“Sasaki-san,” he says, supporting him on one side while Shirazu rushes to the other. “Are you sure you were cleared by medical?”

He nods, waits for the headache to pass. It doesn’t and he’s blind in one eye. Shirazu takes charge and leads him to the couch. Mutsuki assures him that he can make dinner while Saiko sits with him, head on his shoulder, hand slipping into his. Shirazu watches them for a while, then goes to watch Mutsuki in the kitchen.

“Maman,” Saiko mumbles.

“Hmm?”

“You miss Papa a lot, don’t you?” Haise feels like he’s choking on his own breath as he nods. “Me too… I hope he comes home soon.”

Haise closes his eyes and lets his head lean against hers.

_“I’ll find you.”_

“He’ll come back when he’s ready,” Haise murmurs.

“Turn on the news!” Urie demands as he runs into the room. Haise barely lifts his head as his subordinate scrambles for the remote on the coffee table. He’s tired suddenly.

The television sparks to life and on it the face of Washuu Matsuri speaking: “The recent video leaks regarding Rose and Cochlea Prison were _not_ authorized and do _not_ reflect the CCG’s views on ghoul treatment. Shiki Kijima released the Rose video without authorization and was unfortunately killed during the Rose Raid which took place this afternoon. The CCG is sorry for any disturbances that his actions may have caused in the general populace.

“As for the Cochlea Prison leaks, the CCG declines to comment on their content. However, we have discovered the mole, a human working with the ghoul rebel group Aogiri by the name of _Nagachika Hideyoshi_ , and ask that the public not take anything that this saboteur has said to heart. He does not speak for the CCG, but for Aogiri and aims to tears apart—“

“Turn it off,” Haise rasps, getting ready to throw his shoe at the television if he has to, just to shut Washuu up. Urie mutes it but leaves the image on. The subtitles still scroll across the bottom of the screen. Haise leans back into the couch and throws an arm over his eyes so he isn’t tempted to look.

_‘If anyone knows the whereabouts of Nagachika please contact our offices immediately so he can be properly dealt with.’_

Saiko starts swearing at the television in French. _“Vous ne savez pas mon papa! Imbecile! Salaud! Fous-toi!”_

Haise puts a quiet hand on her shoulder and she stops, deciding instead to sit there and stew instead. He glances at the TV just in time to see a picture of Hide on the screen like some kind of wanted poster. The room is stifling.

He gets up and stumbles toward the bedrooms, waving off any help from Saiko or Urie. He gets to Hide’s bedroom and opens the door, closing it behind him. He expects the room to be mostly untouched from the point when Hide had moved into his room but there are papers scattered across his desk, his sheets are in shambles, and all his clothes are spilling from his dresser.

Ah. Right. Akira and Arima had done a thorough search of both his and Hide’s rooms before they had left earlier that week.

He gets an odd rush of satisfaction remembering that they’d left empty-handed.

Haise starts to clean things up despite knowing that eventually they’ll have to pack everything up and take it away. He puts the clothes back in the drawers of the dresser, fingers lingering on Hide’s favorite yellow jacket. He painstakingly picks up the books and puts them back on the shelf. He turns to the desk to look over the papers and they’re all random notes with pictures doodled in the margins or notes in Haise’s or the Quinx’s handwriting addressed to Hide.

One is a child-like drawing from Saiko of the six of them as a family. Haise pulls it from the stack and keeps it close to him. The rest he starts to shove in a desk drawer when some papers sticking up in the back of the drawer catch his eye. He frowns a little and snags them between his fingers, pulling them out.

Haise’s vision swims dangerously as he gazes at the photos of Hide – Hide and _him_.

He and Hide as children. _“Hey! You wanna be friends?”_

He and Hide as teenagers. He and Hide as friends. He and Hide as _Kaneki_ and Hide.

He and Hide at their high school graduation, Hide’s arm slung around his shoulders, his other holding his hat in the air.

He and Hide in a hospital, an eyepatch over his kakugan, his hair pure black, his expression weary.

_“Hey Kaneki! Rabbits die of loneliness you know!”_

The room is spinning. The photos drop from his hand to the floor. The ones on his desk swim before his eyes. The ones of Hide and his parents, of Hide and his _family_ , of Hide and _him_ sitting together, heads bent close, of Hide in his CCG uniform, solitary and alone, of Hide in his CCG uniform, a hand on the back of Haise’s chair and surrounded by the Quinx.

Haise remembers his mother, hands sharp and voice hard.

He barely makes it to the trash can before he vomits.

 

 

One morning he wakes up and his hair is almost entirely black again. He stares at himself in the mirror and decides that this is something Hide would have celebrated.

Akira will be there soon to help him pack up Hide’s room and put it in storage. He can’t say he’s ready for it, but he knew it had to happen. His world doesn’t stop moving just because Hide is no longer there to share it.

“Maman! Akira’s here!” Saiko yells up the stairs and Haise sighs, bracing his arms against the sink counter. He gives one last look at his hair and trudges down the stairs to meet his superior.

“Morning, Akira,” he says as he descends, doing up the final button on his shirt. She nods at him.

“Haise.”

“Do you mind if I make breakfast first?”

Her eyes glitter. “Not at all.”

He heads to the kitchen, passing Shirazu and Saiko on the couch playing video games and Mutsuki reading. “Need any help, Sasaki-san?” Mutsuki asks.

Akira answers for him, “I think we can handle it Mutsuki. Thank you.” Once in the kitchen, Haise pulls out eggs and pancake mix. He hands Akira a bowl and the ingredients for the mix. They work in silence for a while then Akira says quietly, “How would you feel about adding a few new recruits to the QS?”

Haise falters as he cracks a few eggs into a pan. “Is that what you and Arima think is best?” he finally asks, once the eggs have properly started frying.

Akira hums as she stirs the pancake mix. “We were hoping to keep you all in the Chateau with your own rooms but it seems that we may be slightly overcapacity if we bring in everyone we’re looking at.”

Haise frowns. “How many new recruits are you talking about?”

“Just three. But you only have the one spare room. Eight people for six rooms.”

Haise shrugs a little, tries to focus on the eggs instead of the thought of someone else living in Hide’s room. “We could repurpose the attic,” he suggests. She hums in agreement.

“We could also get you your own apartment.”

The spatula in Haise’s hand clatters to the floor. He curses under his breath and bends to pick it up and wash it off. “Don’t the kids need a mentor living with them?”

“Urie and Mutsuki were both promoted to Rank 1 and Shirazu is close to First Class after his efforts against Noro during the Rose Raid,” Akira points out quickly. She sets the bowl down and walks around the island to stand next to him. Her hand rests on his shoulder and she murmurs, “They’re growing up, Haise. You can’t protect them forever.” She’s quiet for a moment then her grip tightens a little. “And I think it might be good for you to get out of this house. There’s a lot of… _memories_ here.”

“You mean Hide was here,” Haise says and is a little amazed that his voice doesn’t crack. Akira squeezes his shoulder and releases him.

“Yes.”

“I’m fine.”

“Haise, anyone can see that you aren’t. Don’t lie to me.”

He takes the pan off the burner and sets it aside, then turns to face her. “He wasn’t what everyone is saying he was. He wasn’t a spy. He wasn’t a traitor. He wasn’t working for fucking _Aogiri_. He… He was just Hide. He was _mine_.”

“I know,” Akira says.

“You don’t.”

“Yes, I _do_.” Her eyes twitch to narrow just barely and then glance toward the Quinx in the living room. Haise narrows his eyes at her and steals the bowl of pancake batter off the island. She’s still standing close to him and she mutters to him, “I know he wasn’t the bad guy. But the CCG has always been in the game of covering their own asses and _someone_ had to take the fall. The easiest person to blame was Nagachika.”

Haise snorts and says lowly, “So they would blame him and sentence him to death for something that he didn’t even do?”

“I didn’t say he didn’t do it.” Haise glares at her and she sighs. “I’m saying… He did a lot of things but I know none of it was necessarily _bad_. And none of it was for Aogiri. I swear Matsuri must have pulled that excuse out of his ass because there was _nothing_ connecting him to Aogiri.”

Haise is quiet, pouring batter into the pan and flipping pancakes as needed. “He was connected to _something_ though?” he finally asks.

She nods. “You. And me. And a small group of ghouls and investigators looking to start a revolution in the CCG. _Not_ in the fashion of Aogiri though.”

“How do you know all this?”

Akira opens her mouth to answer but Saiko bounds around the corner cheering for pancakes and she stops. She shoots him a meaningful look that says they’ll talk more later and starts pulling plates out of a cabinet.

 

 

Akira closes the door of Hide’s room behind them. Haise starts moving on autopilot and Akira lets him while she examines the photos on Hide’s desk. Her eyes widen and shoot to him but he waves a hand at her. “I’ve seen them,” he says.

“You weren’t kidding when you said he didn’t keep things from you then.”

“I overheard you talking in the hallway at work. It sort of forced him to come clean about the entire thing after I heard you say ‘best friend’.”

“I see… Do you have any… other memories?”

He shrugs. “Not particularly.” He sets an empty box in front of the bookshelf and begins unloading Hide’s books into it. “Mostly just of Hide. Some snatches of horrors beyond comprehension came from my nightmares. Insane mutterings from the monster in my head.” He pauses and glances at the framed picture of Hide as a baby with his parents. “My mother.” He frowns and shakes his head. “How do you know all that stuff about Hide?”

Akira smiles mischievously. “Well. I’ve worked with him for four years now and I was on the investigation team into his case.” Haise glowers at her and she laughs. “But that isn’t what you mean is it?” She starts to pick up the photos off the desk and hands them to him. “I’m sure no one else knows about the ghouls he’s working with.”

“Yes. How do you know that?”

“I’m surprised he didn’t tell you,” she remarks. Haise is getting tired of her riddles and roundabouts and it must show on her face because she rolls her eyes and says, “Obviously, I’m helping him. I’m the one who warned him that the higher ups were onto him.”

Haise feels like his blood has frozen. His movements stop. “So that questioning with Arima? That was a ruse?”

“Obviously. We can’t have _all_ our covers blown.”

“Are there more?”

She hums. “I’m sure there _could_ be. There’s enough V agents integrated into the CCG that most of the ones on our side are probably afraid of being found out too soon.” She pauses and he returns to stacking books in the box. “Surely he must have told you _something_.”

Haise purses his lips. “All he said was that he couldn’t implicate me or the kids and that V, the CCG, and Aogiri were ‘all one big clusterfuck.’ Oh and that Arima’s part of V.”

She frowns. “I see.”

The last of the books are in the box. Haise looks up at the posters on the wall and carefully untacks them.

“I suppose I shouldn’t say anything else either then,” Akira murmurs off to the side. “If he didn’t want to get you involved.”

Haise turns to her and says, “Tell me what you think is relevant to why he left me. Because right now that’s the thing causing the biggest pain in my gut.”

Akira’s eyes soften for a moment and her hand strays to squeeze his shoulder. “He didn’t want to.”

“I know _that_ ,” Haise mutters. “He said as much when he woke me up to say goodbye.”

“I think… There must have been someone holding something over his head. Because his cover was tight and he covered his tracks _really_ well. Arima was right when he said that the video clips were traced back to him but Hide would never be careless enough to just leave a trail like that.”

“You think someone blackmailed him?”

“Possibly. Or he was just so distracted by you that he forgot.” She smiles at him but Haise doesn’t find it funny. “More likely the first option. It’s possible he trusted the wrong person and they turned on him.” She scowls. “In fact, I have my suspicions. But he’s not very easy to out. Not when it’s mostly just a gut feeling.”

“Who?”

She shakes her head. “He doesn’t want you involved, Haise.”

“I don’t care what he wants right now, Akira. He’s sacrificed enough for me. I won’t have him giving his life too, not if I can help.”

Akira bites her lip and pulls clothes out of the dresser, folding them into another box. She tugs out Hide’s favorite jacket and Haise takes it from her. “I don’t know, Haise.”

“Akira. I want to help. I’m not fragile.”

She hesitates for a while longer, until almost the entire dresser is packed, then says very quietly, “Furuta. I can’t tell you why I think so, but I do. He’s not known as being the most loyal subordinate and something felt off about how he recounted his squad’s deaths during the Rose Raid.”

Haise frowns but doesn’t disagree. He’s not sure what to do with that information. His hand curls into a fist. His other one cradles Hide’s jacket. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Don’t get yourself in trouble, Haise,” Akira warns softly, “Lay low and let this entire video thing blow over first.”

He nods.

He hates waiting.

 

 

Akira helps Haise move into an apartment in her complex a few weeks later. Haise keeps all of Hide’s stuff in a storage closet in his tiny apartment. He keeps his key to the Chateau. He’s still their mentor, even if he doesn’t live there.

The new recruits are Aura Shinsanpei, Higemaru Touma, and Hsiao Ching-Li. They move into the Chateau not long after Haise moves out but Haise meets them and does an assessment of their abilities while at Headquarters that week.

Ching-Li was exceptionally talented with bare-handed combat to rival that even of Mutsuki. She also had considerable control over her kagune.

Anything Higemaru lacked in ability he made up for in enthusiasm. He had attached himself to Urie almost immediately as a role model and Shirazu had looked a little indignant at being overlooked.

At first, Aura reminded him of Mutsuki when he had first joined the team but it became clear to Haise quickly that his shyness only applied to social and interpersonal settings. He could hold his own in a fight.

Despite not living in the Chateau, Haise still spent a considerable amount of time there. He had helped the new recruits move in and spent extra time in the Chateau’s training room with each of them. Ching-Li had taken Hide’s old room, Aura had his, and Higemaru had the redone attic.

Two days after moving in, Ching-Li brought him a picture she found behind her desk.

“Hey! Who’s that?” Higemaru asks, leaning over to nose into the conversation. Haise sucks in a breath and holds it. “Isn’t that you, Sasaki-san?” He nods. “Who’s with you?”

Saiko frowns and leans in as well. “Oh! That’s Papa!”

It’s not a picture of Haise and Hide in a coffee shop. It’s a picture of _Kaneki_ and Hide. Kaneki with his black and white waiter’s uniform, his white eyepatch strapped across his eye, leaning against the counter of a coffee shop, a small smile on his lips while Hide sits beside him with a grin and a cappuccino.

Haise stares at it and he can feel Saiko watching him.

“It’s the officer who had that room before you, Hsiao,” he murmurs, sliding the picture toward himself, meaning to slip it into his pocket until he catches the writing on the back. He frowns and flips it over.

_Anteiku. Before he left._

 

 

It hits him one night while he’s looking through the pictures that Hide had kept.

He rereads the inscription on the back and _oh_.

 _He_ had been the one that worked with Touka.

He had thought she looked vaguely familiar but he had brushed it off. He can’t believe it’s taken him this long to connect Kaneki to Touka. Hide had said _his best friend once worked with her._

Then the second bit hits him. That Anteiku must be gone because Anteiku is not :re. He feels as though he must know that name from somewhere. Conversations, dream snippets, vague unplaced memories fly through his head.

_“Eat me, Kaneki.”_

_Owl. Manager._

_“Shitty-Kaneki!”_

_Save them._

A knock on his door interrupts his thought process. Haise swings it open and Akira doesn’t even wait to be invited in.

“We need to prep,” she says by way of explanation and she sets a stack of files three inches thick on his kitchen table. Haise closes the door behind her and just watches her sort through them. “There’s going to be one last raid on Aogiri at Rushima Island in a few week’s time. There will be an official briefing meeting tomorrow that you, Shirazu, and Urie are all to attend. Mutsuki will be loaned out for reconnaissance to Hachikawa Squad.” She pauses then says quietly, “Haise, you’re to be added to Arima Squad’s ranks for the duration of the Raid. You’ll be on the front lines with the goal of taking out the One-Eyed Owl.”

“Why _me_?”

She shrugs. “Arima put in the request. And you are his protégé.”

“Is he testing me or something?”

Akira sets down the files in her hand and regards him with a small frown. “Haise, are you scared of Arima?”

He feels shame wash over him briefly. His jaw tightens. “No. I just—“

“Does it have to do with your dreams or your memories?” He purses his lips. She raises her eyebrows. “Both?”

“He’s like a father to me,” Haise starts slowly. “But he… stabbed me through the eyes. He… Hide… Would he kill Hide if he found him?”

Akira sighed and led him to the couch. “Haise. It’s our duty to investigate and exterminate ghouls. Humans who associate themselves with ghouls also become a target. It’s our _duty_ to track down those people. Unfortunately that means that human allies are given the death penalty. Arima is bound by that same duty.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Haise mutters.

Akira takes his hand and looks into his face. “I’m saying that any investigator who finds him is obligated to arrest him, in the very least. The same for Arima. The same for us.”

“Do you think Arima would spare him if I asked?”

Akira shakes her head. “Arima is under orders as much as any of us. If he were ordered to execute Hide, he would have to do it.” Haise frowns at his lap and Akira draws his attention back to her. “But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care about you, Haise.”

Haise nods in acknowledgment and stands.

“I guess we should get to work then,” he says stiffly.

 

  

He goes to :re the next morning when the shop has just barely opened. Haise walks through the door and Touka greets him from behind the counter. As he reaches the counter he says, “Kirish— _Touka_. Anteiku. We worked at Anteiku together?”

Her eyes widen and she accidentally overflows the cup of coffee she had been brewing. The other waiter—Nishio?—who had just come around the corner with a small stack of plates grinds to a halt, the top plates clatter to the floor and shatter, and he whispers, “Holy _shit_.”

Touka looks around the empty shop like someone might overhear her and hisses, “ _Kaneki_?”

He shakes his head. “No. Um. I don’t remember. I just… put together the pieces.” Nishio starts to clean up the broken plates. Another customer comes through the door and Touka shakes her head.

“Come,” she demands to Haise. “Nishio, watch the shop.” Haise skirts around the counter and follows Touka through a door and up some stairs. They step into a staff lounge and Touka closes the door behind them, whirring around to face him. “What. The. _Hell_ ,” she hisses.

“I-I have pieces,” Haise stammers out. “Pieces of memories from Anteiku and… well, Hide said that you and his best friend—which I guess is me—worked together and he had a picture of he and I—er, Kaneki—here.”

“So you immediately came here to out me as a former member of Anteiku?”

“No! No, I only meant… Well…”

“Out with it Sasaki.”

Haise scratches the back of his head and says, “Are you one of the ghouls working with him?”

Touka glares at him. “I’m not obligated to answer that. Even if I _were_ a ghoul.”

Haise rolls his head. He’s beginning to understand what Hide had said about her fiery temper. “I’m not here as an investigator. I’m here as Hide’s friend. I’m here for myself.” Touka still looks skeptical and Haise sighs. “If you are in contact with him… Please keep him safe and tell him to stay away from Rushima. Same with Yotsume. I think… I think I must have known her as well.” He moves to brush past her with a quiet, “Goodbye,” when she grabs his arm and looks into his face. When she lets go and nods, Haise continues on his way out.

“Good luck, Sasaki!” Touka calls after him.

 

 

Roughly five days before the Rushima Raid, Mutsuki leaves with Hachikawa Squad while Haise continues training the other five Quinx as well as sparring regularly with Arima in preparation for the raid. Three days later, they get the confirmation that Aogiri is indeed on the island and Hachikawa Squad is placed in holding position.

“You’ve improved, Haise,” Arima murmurs as he holds the stick he’d been fighting with in place of a quinque to his throat. Haise swallows and his vision swims briefly, a voice eerily similar to Arima’s whispering, _“Would you like to die again?”_

“Not good enough yet though,” Haise mutters as he picks himself up off the ground.

“It will be plenty for the raid,” Arima assures him.

The night before the Raid, Haise dreams of a blazing coffee shop, an old man’s kind smile, and Touka yelling at him.

He wakes up and reaches for Hide only to remember that he isn’t there. He finds it odd how even 8 months later he still sometimes wakes believing those 8 months are nonexistent.

He meets Arima Squad for the raid, catches sight of the Quinx with Urie and Shirazu at the head, and is packed into a boat.

He’s placed on right wing vanguard. Arima Squad is part of the second wave and are meant to skirt around the edges and conserve their energy for a fight with Owl. Somehow in the madness, Haise gets separated from the rest of the Squad.

Owl finds them.

No.

Owl finds _Haise_.

“Didn’t you promise someone that you would save me, Ka-ne-ki?” she asks as she swipes at him. He doesn’t have time to dodge. His earpiece is crushed by the impact and he falls to the ground dizzy. “It was a long time ago. Perhaps you don’t remember?”

He glares at her, his kagune flaring from his back.

They are a flurry of kagune, landing blows and bloodying each other while Haise tries to reorient where he is. When did they become so secluded?

“Here,” Owl hisses, “Let me help you!”

He blocks the kagune-bound limb she swings at him by slicing it from her.

He remembers. Still just pieces but they are enough to give him the strength to slice her out of her kakuja shell. He gains enough strength from Kaneki’s pain to rip her apart.

He remembers his mother beating him as a child. Remembers his aunt continuing it after her death. He remembers Arima cutting him to pieces and stabbing him through the eyes, blinding him. He remembers Yoshimura’s request.

Words fly from his mouth as he cuts into her, words he doesn’t even understand. “It’s _mine_. My eyes, my body, my choices, my soul!”

He remembers who she is with a final _crunch_ of his kagune into her middle and stares in disgust at the creature before him.

“Oh. Do you remember now?” she asks, kakuja in shambles around her.

Haise’s vision swims and he stumbles. Vaguely, he recognizes that he’s probably concussed. But he looks at her, pinned by his kagune and the symbol of everything he and Hide have tried to fight, and says, “Why should I have to save trash like you?”

 

 

Arima Squad finds him on the ground next to Owl’s kakuja, Owl herself gone, blood covering Haise’s front and his mouth, a ways from the main battle.

“I’ve seen her somewhere before,” he mutters as Arima leans over him to check his injuries. Everything is spinning.

“Where did she go, Haise?” Arima asks, carefully trying to pull him into sitting position.

“She… fled. After I dealt her several life-threatening injuries.” Haise feels like his skin in burning where Arima touches him. Feels his bruises like they were dealt by his mother’s hand. His head hurts. Darkness tinges the edge of his vision and voices whisper just outside of his grasp. “I… I know her somehow.”

He can _feel_ the gates in his mind cracking. Can feel the monster who hasn’t haunted his dreams for so long waiting to take hold again. Can feel the full weight of all his memories pressing in.

“Haise?”

He remembers Hide’s words and pushes back against the gate. He doesn’t have to remember. He looks up at the sky.

Arima’s voice is still calling him.

Darkness takes him.

 

 

_“Horror fiction writer, Takatsuki Sen announced the date for a new novel today and there is speculation that this will be her final work.”_

Haise’s head feels heavy. The TV is too loud.

_“The CCG has announced the extermination and take down of dangerous ghoul group Aogiri Tree’s main stronghold. We are still waiting for an official statement with the details.”_

“Hide,” he groans, “turn it off.”

Someone turns the volume down. The images on the screen still cause too-bright light to flicker off the opposite wall.

_“CCG officials are still on the lookout for human Nagachika Hideyoshi for the crime of aiding ghouls. He is considered armed and dangerous.”_

Haise’s eyes snap open as the picture of Hide fades from the TV.

Akira is sitting in a chair not far from where he’s lying on the couch. “How you feeling?” Akira asks in what he guesses is a pretty quiet voice. He still flinches, the words echoing around his head. “Arima said you fought Owl.”

He just barely nods, afraid to move too much. “She beat the crap out of me,” he whispers.

“But you beat her pretty badly too,” Akira chuckles softly.

“They’re still looking for Hide?”

“Of course they are. He doesn’t stop being a wanted criminal just because we beat Aogiri down to a couple of scraps.”

Haise closes his eyes again.

“You know. You’re part of the reason that I’m helping him.” Haise cracks one eye open to glance at her. “I used to be pretty ruthless too. All ghouls were just evil to me. They’d killed my parents and there was no reason for me to think otherwise. Then you came along. And Amon…” She stops.

Haise just barely remembers an image of a giant of a man wielding a quinque while whispering voices went crazy in his head. “I killed him,” Haise mutters.

“We’ve had this conversation, Haise,” Akira says.

Haise shakes his head. “Hide says that there’s no way to separate Kaneki from Haise or Haise from Kaneki. We’re the same person. That monstrous quality still lives somewhere inside me waiting to break out. I… felt it while I was fighting Owl. The part of me that just wants to eat and eat and eat.”

Akira sighs. “I’ll schedule you another feeding appointment with Dr. Shiba. Your regeneration seems to be working slower than normal too, probably because the intensity of your fight.” He nods and drapes an arm over his eyes to block out the light. “I… didn’t want to tell you before the raid in case it threw off your preparations but… I haven’t heard anything from my contacts in a while.”

Haise stills. “Hide?”

“Nothing. From him or my other contacts in association with him. It’s like he dropped off the map.”

“Could he have been killed?”

“I don’t think so. He was gathering more information on V last I spoke to him.”

“A ghoul?”

“He’s doing a tremendous amount to _help_ ghouls, Haise. I don’t think a ghoul would take him out. Besides, he’s got a pretty good security team from what I can tell. Chances are he’s winding up and laying low for something coming. Something big.”

Haise lets that settle in his mind then asks about the rest of Rushima.

“A few escapees, including Owl. Rabbit and Yotsume were nowhere to be found. The majority of Aogiri’s execs were wiped out. Takizawa was taken into custody instead of killed to see if we can at least revert him back from brainwashed killing machine. The Quinx did very well. You would have been proud of them.”

He hums, mind still on the fact that Hide has disappeared. Again.

 

 

Their efforts the next few months are focused entirely on finding the few remaining Aogiri members and crushing them. Haise is promoted to Associate Special Class. The Quinx all gain at least one rank.

Haise stands there during the ceremony, claps where appropriate, but his mind is far away. He glances down the line where Furuta stands, looking just as timid and useless as always. He curls his hand in a fist at his side as the ceremony ends.

When he requests to be transferred away from the Quinx the reactions are varied.

“Maman why?!” Saiko cries.

Urie looks as unimpressed as always. Ching-Li as well.

Mutsuki is outwardly disappointed but doesn’t question him, similarly to Aura.

Shirazu and Higemaru are almost as upset as Saiko.

He gazes around at the seven of them then glances at where Akira stands behind him. “I appreciate each of you,” he says slowly, “But… I have other duties to attend to now that I’m Associate Special Class. I can’t take care of you forever and Shirazu and Urie as First Class officers will lead and train you well with Saiko and Mutsuki.”

“But, _Maman_!”

Haise turns his gaze directly to Saiko. She wilts a little under it but Haise has never been anything if not gentle. “It’s not like you’ll never see me, Saiko,” he murmurs. “I’m still here and I’ll still be willing to help you when I have time. But there are other things I have to take care of.”

Saiko’s eyes are filled with tears and she sniffs as he stands to face Urie and Shirazu.

He smiles at them and holds out a hand, first to Urie, then Shirazu. “Good luck,” he says. Urie, still looking a little shocked, takes his offered hand. Shirazu, instead of shaking his hand, collapses in a hug.

As they leave, Haise says one word to Akira, “Hide?”

“Nothing,” she answers.

He sighs.

“Your new subordinate for pursuing Owl is confirmed to be Rank 1 Furuta Nimura though.”

He slides into the passenger seat of the car they took to the Chateau together and mutters, “Excellent.” He pulls a book out of his bag and pauses as he reads the title for what must have been the hundredth time in his life: _The Black Goat’s Egg_ by Takatsuki Sen. He sucks in a breath.

“I think I just remembered where I know her from.”

 

 

His and Furuta’s first assignment as partners is to track down proof that Takatsuki Sen is Owl. The first thing they do is find her editor and question him.

It takes only a little roughing up to get him to confess that he saw human-like meat in her fridge and that she has a press conference for the release for her new book that afternoon.

Haise and Furuta are en route to the venue as soon as they can. They’re on their way into the auditorium when Akira calls him. “Haise, are you there yet?” she asks, then interrupts before he can reply. “If not turn on the news, Takatsuki—“

“You heard me. _I am a ghoul_ ,” Eto is saying on stage. Haise nearly drops his phone. “ _I wrote the final work for the lonely comrades who thirst for blood and flesh and were born wrong with me.”_

She gazes into the audience and Haise _swears_ that she looks directly at him and smiles.

 

 

The CCG offices are in _chaos_ for the next few weeks. Even the satisfaction of bringing in Takatsuki Sen—better known as Eto Yoshimura or One-Eyed Owl—doesn’t stop the stream of protests and counter-protests occurring outside the main headquarters.

Haise and Furuta are the ones that get to interrogate her from the other side of the glass in Cochlea and that is where Haise gets Furuta.

With Akira, he listens to the recorded tape of everything that Furuta has done over the last 5 years or so and feels both triumphant and nauseated.

He remembers a clown’s mask far above him as his vision darkens. He remembers seeing that same mask in some sort of auditorium.

He grips his head and a soft cry of pain falls from his lips.

“Haise?” Akira reaches for the recorder and pauses it. Her hand comes to rest on his arm.

“Have you heard from Hide?” he gasps when he finds his voice again.

“No.” A chain rattles somewhere in the dark recesses of his mind.

“I need him.”

“I don’t know where he is, Haise.”

“Furuta is part of the reason I became a ghoul.” He feels like his head is trying to rattle off his shoulders. He lets out a quiet whine. “I need _Hide_.”

Akira wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him toward her.

“Soon, hopefully,” she mumbles into his hair as his shoulders shake.

 

 

Arima calls him into his office a few weeks later. He tries to figure out why before going in but it escapes him up until the point when he enters the office. As usual, Arima is on the offense in seconds, hopping easily to meet him. Haise blocks the attack and counters by sweeping his leg under Arima, hooking a foot around his ankle.

Arima jumps to avoid tumbling to the ground and the sparring continues until Haise falls to the floor and lays there on his back, breathing heavily.

There’s a small smile on Arima’s face as he holds a hand out to Haise. Haise takes it and Arima helps pull him to his feet. “Good to see you’re recovered from Rushima,” Arima murmurs. He still gets intermittent headaches. Still feels the past pressing at the gate. But he’s fine. He’s strong enough without the memories.

He nods and stands there awkwardly. Arima invites him to sit. “I just wanted to check in with you Haise,” Arima admits when they’re sitting across from each other. “You… You took some hard hits during Rushima.”

Haise snorts. “She almost bashed my head in, you mean.”

“You did _well_ , Haise.”

The dreamt image of Arima’s quinque stabbing through Hide’s chest jumps to the forefront of his mind with no provocation. He flinches and closes his eyes. Arima’s eyes watch him. He doesn’t ask but when Haise opens his eyes he can see the question hanging on Arima’s lips.

“I’m fine,” he says quietly. He swallows.

“I know we’ve been… strained since Nagachika left.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Arima almost looks hurt. Haise curses himself for his curtness. He bites his lip and turns his head away. “Haise, what’s wrong?”

“Would you spare him?” the question falls from his mouth completely unbidden. “Would you spare him like you spared me?”

Arima regards him for a moment and when he speaks, it isn’t to answer his question. “Things are going to change soon, I think,” he says softly. He looks at his hands and curls his fingers slowly, examining them as though they’ll tell him the future. “My era is ending.”

Arima’s phone, poised on the corner of his desk, alerts him of a text message and he glances at it, then, with a slight look of alarm, stands and strides over to the television.

 _“—breeding super-humans. Experimenting on children. They call it the_ Sunlit Garden _and they’re mixing ghoul and human DNA to try and create some kind of super-human race, inadvertently creating half-ghouls in the process._

_“It isn’t very different from what Dr. Kanou Akihiro started working on for the CCG back before he started his hospital. It’s not different from what he did to that poor Kamii student after the CCG shut him down. They’re breeding children, children who have no real family. They only have the Sunlit Garden and themselves. They aren’t human and they grow up with that knowledge._

_“The evidence is in the medical records. Children bred from the Sunlit Garden go on to have increased physical capabilities but shorter lifespans. They’re more likely to die before they turn 40 and have medical complications and cell degeneration as early as 20.”_

Arima is staring at the screen as images of records, video of children playing in a field of flowers, play across the screen to the narration. Haise is staring as well. Then, Hide’s face is on the TV. He’s smiling sardonically. Haise feels his heart in his ears.

_“This is the CCG’s doing. This is what they do behind closed doors. But that’s not all. I’m going to tell you the story of Kaneki Ken, that student from Kamii who went missing about 5 years ago after an incident with Kanou Hospital.”_

Haise thinks he’s going to be sick. Arima glances at him and moves to turn it off but Haise raises a hand. “No.”

_“Many people have heard of Kaneki, my best friend. They heard of his accident and the fact that Kanou transplanted organs from the woman he was on a date with during the accident into him. What the public does not know is that Dr. Kanou transplanted the ghoul’s kakuhou into him, turning him into a half-ghoul._

_“Kaneki had to adjust to life fearing that the CCG would find him and kill him for something that was undeniably not his choice.”_

Haise looks at Arima, a brief flash of waking up in a hospital flashing through his mind. “Did we get Kanou in the Rushima Raid?” he asks. Arima doesn’t answer him, scowling at the screen.

_“The world was not kind to Kaneki. Neither the ghoul nor the human ones. He suffered. He struggled. He lost his mind and was eventually captured by the CCG. I will not say the name he goes by now because I don’t want there to be backlash against him but I will say that he’s still in the CCG, trapped by a contract, still fearing for his life if he were to lose control._

_“I responded to Kaneki’s plight the only way that I knew how: acceptance. Love. I love him. I don’t care whether he’s human or ghoul. I wouldn’t care if he sprouted three heads and started eating nothing but dirt. He is still Kaneki Ken. He is still my best friend. He is still the love of my life, no matter how his DNA changes. I want every human watching this right now to think about what they would do if their best friend came to them and admitted that they were a ghoul. I want you to think very hard about what makes them your friend and I want you to think about Kaneki Ken. Would you want your friend to be treated this way?”_

The screen cuts to a clip from Kijima’s Rose video then to a clip of a ghoul being slaughtered.

 _“I don’t think this is what any of us wants from our law enforcement, for our friends. Ghouls are out there and some of them_ are _dangerous. But they are also trying to survive in a world that does not want them. Think about your friends. Think about your family. And choose wisely.”_

There’s nothing but static and Haise realizes that he had been waiting for Hide to talk directly to him. He draws in deep breaths, trying to calm his racing heart. His eyes are out of focus. Arima looks at him and Haise can’t decide if his gaze is sharp and angry or gentle and sympathetic. Neither of them say anything, then Arima murmurs, “Do you really feel that way?”

Haise swallows, eyelids fluttering as he tries not to cry. Then he nods. Arima is in front of him within seconds, hands on the arms of his chair. “Haise, I would never let your life be tossed away like that.” Haise nods because he had known, somewhere deep down, that it was true. Arima visibly swallows and then says, “The Sunlit Garden is real. It’s all true.”

Haise’s gaze shoots to his face and Arima gauges his reaction very carefully. “I’m sure you’ve already noticed that I can’t see anything out of my right eye. It’s a glaucoma, Haise. A common thing for the elderly.”

“But you’re only…” Haise trails off, the realization hitting him. “You’re one of them. The Sunlit Children.”

Arima only nods and stands. “My era is ending, Haise. It isn’t up to me anymore.”

Haise thinks that, maybe, he has an answer to his question now.

 

 

There’s a meeting involving all Special and Associate Special Class investigators a few days later when it actually becomes possible to get into the building. Protests close to riots had been happening outside CCG offices ever since Hide’s video went live on hijacked news stations. Ghoul activists were spilling out of the woodwork. Ghoul-Human alliance groups were springing up across the wards. And most of all, people wanted answers.

Haise wakes the morning of the meeting to find a note on his bedside table. He regards it for a moment, then picks it up, unfolding the small card.

_‘I’ll find you in the aftermath.’_

Haise assumes that this means that Hide’s just waiting for the final domino to fall. He sighs and lets the hand holding the note drop to dangle between his knees. _‘Soon,’_ he thinks, closing his eyes. It’s been nearly a year since he’s seen Hide in the flesh, since he’s held him. Haise is so, so tired.

Haise sits between Arima and Akira at the meeting. Under the table, Akira’s hand reaches for his as Yoshitoki Washuu brings up the video. “We need him found,” he’s saying, “Nagachika and his conspirators are to be found and punished.”

Haise is just beginning to work up the courage to speak up when Marude does it for him. “He’s right though, isn’t he?”

All eyes are on either Marude or Yoshitoki, seated only two seats from each other. Yoshitoki’s eyes are hard. Marude continues, “You know, Takatsuki’s novel makes the claim that the Washuu are conspiring and cooperating with ghouls.” He stands and begins to pace all the while Yoshitoki’s eyes follow him. _“It’s not that I believe everything in that stupid book but I decided to do my own investigating. I looked at your meals and your conduct, checking for anything out of place. Nothing was weird. Except one thing._

 _“Apparently, there’s a special trick to the gate. The system that prevents quinques from setting it off is also used for certain people. So I asked someone more informed about this than me, ‘When exactly does it react?’ They said it was when any of these people pass through:_ Sasaki, of course, but also _Arima Kishou, the Zero Squad members from the ‘Garden’ and Hsiao Ching-Li of the QS Squad.”_

He pauses and Haise glances to the side at Arima. He thinks he knows what’s coming next.

_“The Washuu Clan are not ghoul conspirators, they are ghouls themselves.”_

Yoshitoki merely raises an eyebrow to the silence in the room. Haise realizes that at least half the room is holding their breath. Marude is standing directly behind Haise, facing Yoshitoki across the table.

Yoshitoki says, “Well that’s certainly an interesting theory. But the Special Class Marude I knew was definitely not a fool. You’ve known me and Arima for a long time. There’s no way you wouldn’t have noticed. You can look at Arima’s examination records at a later date—“

“No,” Marude says. “I would rather not settle things this way. But, in the words of an old friend…” Marude pauses long enough to draw a gun and point it at Yoshitoki’s head. A few people gasp. He glances at Akira only briefly and continues. “This is just my intuition.”

The crack of the gun resounds through the room. Yoshitoki’s body falls back, bullet between the eyes. Haise lets out a breath and sucks another in. Akira’s grip on his hand is vice-like as the room waits. Arima seems to be the only one not shocked. They wait.

“Just call this a simple act of murder…” Marude begins as the room continues to stare at Yoshitoki’s body.

Arima actually rolls his eyes and calls, “You’re found out. Give it up.” Haise’s eyes snap to him. If possible, Akira’s grip becomes even tighter.

Yoshitoki’s form straightens and his eyes open, revealing two kakugan. Haise feels a knot in his stomach release. “This is very disappointing,” Yoshitoki says. “We may just have to rebuild from the ground up.”

“Nagachika was right,” Marude hisses behind him, actually backing up in shock. Yoshitoki looks at Arima, seeming to give him an order merely with his eyes as a room full of elite ghoul investigators all begin to move. Those near Yoshitoki move away from him, those farther away move closer, some with briefcases in hand.

Haise cannot seem to move. Akira’s quinque has already been activated and she holds it before her.

This whole time the people who had held him in the CCG, threatened him with extermination, they were ghouls. Arima is still seated beside him, calm as he always is. How can he be so calm?

 _He knew_.

Arima glances at him, still seated as primly as he was at the start.

_“My era is ending.”_

As Yoshitoki’s kagune come out, Haise acts. His kakugan activates with his kagune coming out to block the Washuu’s. Yoshitoki is pissed but it’s nothing compared to the raging _fire_ running through Haise’s veins.

“My entire known life I’ve been told to stay in line because another _ghoul_ would have me killed,” he spits, straining against the raw power behind Yoshitoki’s kagune. “Because your family hated yourselves so much they turned on their own kind, tried to _make_ yourselves more human.” Most of the investigators around them seem at a loss. Akira sends her quinque flying at the ghoul and he shifts his kagune around to deflect it. “But you know what makes a human—what makes a _person_? Decency. How you treat other people. Compassion. _Mercy_.”

Yoshitoki finally manages to push back against Haise hard enough to move him and Haise flies back almost to the opposite wall. Haise’s glare is fierce as his opponent nonchalantly takes out his phone and puts it on speed dial. “Code Zero,” he says and hangs up. “Arima.” The name itself is a command. Arima stands, quinque case in hand… And moves to the edges of the room. He sets his case down with a resounding _clunk_. Yoshitoki’s fury is palpable. 

Haise feels three years of pent up frustration and rage come to the surface all at once. He feels the monster inside him rattle at the gate but for the first time, Haise isn’t afraid. He and the monster are equals, they’re two halves of a whole. It may seem brutal and ugly but Haise, for once, sees the beauty in it as something otherworldly, something unapologetically and emotionally _human._ He can finally see _himself_ in this foreign creature and for what feels like the first time he’s not only fighting for others. He’s fighting for himself.

“ _Maybe_ if you had some of those traits, people wouldn’t automatically want you dead for this secret,” Haise concludes with a bite and attacks with zero remorse and no second thoughts.

Akira is beside him, the two well enough in tune to know how to stay out of each other’s way. Haise lets his fury fuel him. The other investigators have either decided to stand back with Arima, quinques still at the ready if they require backup, or have left entirely.

There are ten minutes of intense fighting when Arima yells, “HAISE!” as a quinque flies toward his back from behind.

He doesn’t have the time to dodge or block. Laughter surrounds him as he’s speared in the side. He cries out and someone blocks Yoshitoki’s kagune, taking up the fight in his stead. Haise sets his glare on a cackling Furuta, who’s brought with him a mass of what Haise assumes are V agents. The large conference room is chaos overflowing into the hall.

“Miss me, Sasaki?” Furuta asks, with a malicious grin.

Chains rattle around in his head. Centipedes crawl in his ear. Haise snarls, “Why don’t you show who you really are, _Washuu_?”

Furuta’s kagune materializes and his kakugan activates as his laughter grows. Haise hears a woman’s cackle, feels the ghost of a kagune similar to his own wrap around his waist. A clatter. The gate cracks. He blocks a series of blows from Furuta, loses a kagune with a few fingers caught as well.

He counts under his breath, without actually realizing he’s doing it. “1000… 993… 986… 979…”

“Haise!” he hears Akira yell at him from where she’s fighting two V agents at once. One of them loses his head. “Don’t strain!”

He ignores her.

“Is this how you killed Yamori?” Furuta asks as Haise lays into him viciously. The chain on the gate drops. Furuta’s kagune lands a blow that takes a chunk out of Haise’s side.

He screams but it soon turns to bitter laughter. “You think _that_ hurts?!” His efforts renew and soon he has Furuta backed into a corner. “You know what hurts?” Furuta aims a kick at his head. Haise blocks with an arm that grabs it and hangs on while his own leg flies up and drops down on Furuta’s head. His kagune dive for Furuta’s back, aiming for his kakuhou. “Your life being destroyed piece by piece as everything you’ve ever known is either taken or crushed,” he hisses.

Furuta’s kagune extends to defend him. Haise slices it off. He tastes flesh in his mouth. Ghoul flesh. He cracks his fingers and brings an elbow down hard on Furuta’s back. Something cracks. Furuta’s laughter is his scream.

“HAISE!” Akira shouts again.

“Being thrown to the wolves of this world to the point where your own _mind_ rebels against you.” He puts a foot against Furuta’s shoulder and yanks his arm back. He sees Yoshimura fall. His story plays through his head. Someone is screaming. He thinks it’s him.

“Haise!” Arima is yelling at him too, fighting through the horde to get to him. Haise’s kagune dig into Furuta, piercing his kakuhou and immobilizing his kagune.

“Watching everyone you love be killed, _murdered_ , and not be able to do anything about it,” he says, or maybe he screams it.

Akira is fighting her way toward him now as well, still yelling his name.

 _“LET ME OUT! PLEASE! I HAVE TO SAVE THEM!”_ His eyes are blind, his voice tears at his throat as he screams.

_“They’re dead. I killed them all.”_

The gate breaks in his mind breaks. Haise doesn’t even try to stop it. There is pain in his head, pain everywhere but it is _nothing_ , _nothing_ compared to what he’s already endured.

He’s stopped screaming. He falters, unsteady on his legs as the full force of his memories fly through his head. The bits and pieces he had collected from his nightmares, his dreams, his questions string together in a single coherent picture.

“Having so much good around you… and still wanting to die,” he whispers.

Furuta’s laughter has turned desperate somehow. Haise bashes at his head to stop it completely. It dies down to whimpers. Haise leans down. “I don’t want to die anymore,” he tells Furuta with a savage quality to his voice. “And I don’t have to kill to get stronger anymore.”

He picks up Furuta’s head calmly and throws it into the floor, knocking him out instead of killing him.

Akira and Arima reach him at the same time Yoshitoki lets out a scream as he’s finally fatally wounded.

“Haise,” they’re both saying in echoes. He stumbles a little. Akira reaches his side and holds him up as his knees collapse. “Haise!” His kagune disappears.

“It’s okay,” he mumbles. “It’s okay. I’m fine.” The room spins so he closes his eyes just for a moment. He looks at her, at Arima and smiles. “My name is Sasaki Haise but it is also Kaneki Ken. I am a ghoul but I am also a human. I’m an Associate Special Class investigator with the CCG but I don’t think the CCG is going to be around much longer.”

The remaining V agents have either died or fled and Haise looks around at the carnage. His head spins again and darkness creeps at the corners of his vision. “I need to eat again,” he says quietly.

Arima’s hand lands on his shoulder. “We’ll arrange something, Haise. Rest.”

Arima helps Akira lower him down and Haise lets the darkness take him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize that I said Haise never remembers but then I came to terms with the fact that it's impossible for Haise to continue without remembering. Thus this. 
> 
> BUT AT LEAST NO ONE DIES.


	3. A Million Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world has changed... But it also hasn't.

Haise does not dream.

He wakes up from a deadened sleep to a darkened room where the only light is filtering through a crack in the blinds over the window to the side. He groans. Someone shifts.

“Haise? You awake?”

“Yeah,” he croaks, throat scratchy and rough. He squints around in the dimness for the voice. A weight rests on the edge of his bed—wait when did he get to a bed? “Where am I?”

“Cochlea,” the voice says. Haise shoots upright, startling the person on the bed. His heart starts racing, he can’t breathe. “Haise, Haise, Haise,” they—he—amends quickly, “You’re not trapped. You can leave whenever you want. It was just a precaution in case you woke up not in your right mind.”

“Hide?”

“We’re looking for him.”

“Akira?”

“I’m here Haise,” her voice says somewhere off to the side.

“Arima?” The shadowy figure on his bed nods his head. Haise forces himself to breathe. He feels fingers brush through his hair. “Why is it so dark?”

“Do you want some lights?”

He nods and Akira switches a lamp on. He shuts his eyes against the sudden light then squints through the burn. Sure enough, Akira and Arima are seated by his bed. The window is the one in the door that leads to the hall. He swallows down the residual panic.

“Do you remember what happened?” Akira asks him gently while Arima watches him.

“There was a fight… I lost it a little…”

“You were screaming a lot more than a little,” Akira interjects.

He rolls his eyes. “I… beat Furuta to a pulp.” Arima chuckles at that. “The… The Washuus are ghouls.” His mouth goes dry as he realizes that the familiar feeling of missing pieces has disappeared. “I remember everything,” he whispers. “There’s… no missing pieces anymore.”

“Are you okay?” Arima questions.

He nods. “I feel… whole,” he murmurs. “Not necessarily great but… whole.”

“Good,” Akira says, “Because we’ve got a lot of work to do still.” He frowns and she explains, “We basically gutted the CCG of any V agents and overthrew the Washuus. There are a lot of people looking for answers and there’s a lot of things that we need to rebuild.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“Nearly a week,” Arima answers. “I wasn’t surprised. The first time you slept when you were imprisoned here you stayed asleep for three days.” The corner of his lips turn up and for once he actually looks as old as his body is.

Akira’s phone rings. She excuses herself and leaves them alone. “You guys really are my parents,” Haise jokes.

Arima’s eyes twinkle just a little. “I’m glad I’ll be able to claim that I’ve left something behind,” he says and he sounds so old, so tired. Haise’s breath catches as he realizes what he means. “I’m tired, Haise. And I know you’ll do better things with this world than I did. You’ll _give_ things instead of just take and take and take.”

Haise feels tears in his eyes, unbidden. “What if I’m not ready?” he whispers.

“You are. Or you will be soon.” He pauses, lays a hand over Haise’s and squeezes.

“But I’m not sure I’m strong enough.”

Arima sighs, looks his charge in the eye and says, “You’re _always_ enough, Haise.”

 

 

“We need to completely demolish and rebuild,” Aura Kiyoko insists. Haise sighs, digging his hands in his hair and setting his head on the table. This is the fifth meeting they’ve had on this subject and no one has decided what to do yet.

“Why completely demolish when we could easily use the skeleton of the system already in place? Less work that way,” Suzuya retorts and turns to him. “Haise?”

He thinks. He thinks for a long time and the room waits. Arima sits at the table, but he’s merely there to watch. “I think… If we want true integration, true acceptance of ghouls in society, we can’t just use the system with different—human—leaders. We need humans and ghouls working _together_.” He hesitates and both Kiyoko and Suzuya look disappointed but triumphant. Haise glances at Arima. “We need to overhaul the system, rewrite the conduct policies. I propose that we re-interview _all_ employees. Test for sensitivities toward _all_ people, ghouls and humans. Any biases need to be squashed. We also should open up the interviews to ghouls and aim to hire at least a third as many of them as humans. No more use of quinques, guns with RC suppressants instead. Retrain all staff under these measures.

“We need _humane_ , equal treatment. Have the same consequences for the same crimes. Death penalties are only for the worst crimes and are carried out regardless of their species. Everyone gets a hearing or trial of some kind with a non-biased judge and/or jury. And we need a system put in place where ghouls can get food without killing. Which _isn’t_ crushing ghouls down into liquid RC cells.” He looks at Arima and Akira. “It may work for me but it’s gross and feels like a form of cannibalism, especially now that I know where it comes from.”

“Haise,” Akira murmurs off to the side, “That’s overstepping the CCG’s jurisdiction. We’d have to get the laws rewritten.”

“Then we’ll do it,” Haise insists. “We’ll lobby the government. There’s surely enough public support for it now and if the CCG—which we’ll have to change the name of by the way—rewrites their policies to be more supportive of ghoul equality, the people may just follow.”

“Are you proposing that we just integrate with the police?” Marude asks. “Because that’s what it sounds like. If there’s true ghoul equality then humans and ghouls would be under the same justice system.”

Haise shakes his head. “No. I think police _cooperation_ would be good, but the CCG should still deal mainly in ghoul justice. We’ll still specialize in dealing with ghouls and ghoul-related crimes.”

“It’s still not entirely up to us.” It’s Arima who speaks up. “The CCG only exists because it was sanctioned by the government. The law has to be changed before you can change the judicial system. We can only carry out that law.”

Haise looks at him and finds that he isn’t looking at anything in particular. Just staring straight ahead. He frowns a little. Akira speaks before he can find the words, “I think… I know some people who can work on that.”

Haise nods sharply at her. “Good. For now we can at least re-interview and retrain our employees and switch out quinques for guns. And we can emphasize a capture-before-kill policy. Then at least we can imprison at Cochlea until the law gets changed.”

“All in favor,” Akira asks the room.

The vote is nearly unanimous.

 

 

 _“Confirmation came through today that the Commission for Counter-Ghoul Intelligence is indeed attempting to reform its system. The shocking news that the CCG is run primarily by a select family of_ ghouls _and the formerly secret group V came in early last week. This reform seems to be a direct response to this information and the public’s—“_

Haise changes the channel.

_“The CCG may soon not be the CCG—“_

Switch.

_“It’s not enough. They need new laws—“_

Switch.

_What about ghoul-on-ghoul crime? Surely there’s a lot of that going around and—“_

Switch.

_“—Should be bearing down on ghoul crime, not suspending action. Who’s going to protect our citizens from these creatures?”_

Haise groans and turns the TV off, throwing the remote onto the coffee table.

“The world’s a mess isn’t it?”

Haise whirls around and finds Hide leaning against the doorframe to the staff lounge at :re. He’s frozen in fear that this is another dream. He breathes in sharply through his nose and only just lets himself whisper, “Hide.”

Hide strides toward him and sits on the couch. “Hey, Haise,” he murmurs, picking up Haise’s hand and planting a kiss on his knuckles. He looks at Haise, a smile on his lips and love in his eyes.

“I found you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it for this bit folks. This started out as a simple little fic, turned into a longer three-parter, and eventually I ended up turning it into a Camp NaNoWriMo thing and I have over 50k words and another 4 years worth of political revolution. It's all fully written, just needs to be edited but I'm not entirely sure if I Will Find You needs it. Depending on the response, I'll post it as a separate fic. At the moment I'm inclined to keep it to myself.


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